Scotland: Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness & Rod Stewart – World Cup ’86 remembered

Two defeats in two games left Scotland needing to beat Uruguay to advance to the last 16 and Ferguson with a decision to make.

Captain Souness, by then 33, had struggled with the heat and the altitude and, after a meeting of the coaches, it was agreed he would be left out. The manager went to the midfielder’s room to break the news, which was apparently met without fuss.

A couple of months before, it had been announced Souness would be leaving Sampdoria to revolutionise Rangers. A Rangers side that would threaten Ferguson’s Aberdeen and a Dundee United team represented in Mexico by five players.

Neither Miller nor Bannon recalls any tensions as a consequence, although the former suggests the dynamic had shifted given more than half the squad were Scotland-based, and the latter recalls whispered conversations between the captain and defender Richard Gough, who would arrive at Ibrox the next summer.

“His room was two doors down from mine and I chatted to him a lot,” says Rough. “He told me he was trying to sign Chris Woods and Terry Butcher, who were both in the England squad, and I just laughed.

“But you could see he was really trying to learn about the Scottish game.”