Scotland Hadn't Won a World Cup Match in 36 Years. It Just Took Over Brazil's Group.

After one round of matches in one of the World Cup’s most loaded groups, the team sitting alone at the top is not Brazil, the five-time champion. It is not Morocco, a 2022 semifinalist many expected to push the favorites. It is Scotland, a country that had not won a World Cup match in 36 years.

That is the standing in Group C after a single Saturday flipped the order almost everyone predicted. Brazil, billed as the group’s class, was held to a 1-1 draw by Morocco in front of 80,663 fans at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Hours later, at the stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, John McGinn scored the only goal as Scotland beat Haiti 1-0 — ending a drought that had outlasted most of the careers in his own dressing room. The result left Scotland on three points, with Brazil and Morocco on one each and Haiti on zero.

For a tournament being played across North America, with marquee names drawing the crowds, it was the kind of opening weekend that scrambles assumptions early. Brazil arrived as one of the favorites to win the whole thing. By the time the Group C games were finished, it was the side doing the chasing.

A nervy night for Brazil at MetLife

Brazil’s evening did not follow the script. Morocco struck first in the 21st minute when Ismael Saibari finished past goalkeeper Alisson Becker, silencing a crowd that had been overwhelmingly yellow-clad and expecting a procession. The lead lasted barely 11 minutes. In the 32nd, Vinícius Júnior exchanged passes with Bruno Guimarães on the left, carved out a yard of space and drove a right-footed shot past Morocco keeper Yassine Bounou for what was his 10th international goal.

The equalizer steadied Brazil but did not transform it. Morocco, organized and quick in transition, matched the favorites for long stretches and had chances to win it. Brazil’s unbeaten record in World Cup openers survived, but only just, and the performance drew open frustration from a coach not given to panic.

Carlo Ancelotti, the Italian who took over the Seleção last year, did not hide his concern afterward. “I think we didn’t start very well; I’m a little worried,” he said. “We lost a lot of duels and possession, but we improved in the second half of a difficult match because Morocco is a good team.” He also offered the longer view that tends to follow a stumble: “You don’t win a World Cup based on your first match.”

He is right that one point is not a crisis. But the result matters in a group this tight. A draw against a side as capable as Morocco means Brazil now needs results against the rest of the field to avoid an awkward final round — a far cry from the comfortable start the bracket seemed to promise when the tournament opened at Estadio Azteca earlier in the week. The favorites are not in trouble. They are simply not in control.

Scotland ends a wait older than its squad

If Brazil’s night was about a missed expectation, Scotland’s was about a wait finally ending. The country had not won a match at a World Cup since 1990, a span of 36 years across which an entire generation grew up hearing about near-misses rather than seeing victories. McGinn’s goal in the 28th minute — a scrappy finish from a scramble in the box, after Che Adams had been denied — was also Scotland’s first World Cup goal in 28 years.

Manager Steve Clarke framed the win as both relief and reward. “It tells you how difficult it is for a country like Scotland to go to a World Cup and win games,” he said, before crediting a group of players who have carried the national team through years of qualification heartbreak. Captain Andy Robertson said the squad had “achieved their dreams.”

McGinn, the man who delivered it, was characteristically blunt about the quality of the goal and clear about its meaning. “It’s crazy,” he told the BBC. “It wasn’t my best of goals but who cares. Haiti are a decent team by the way. We had to work hard for it … But it was a must-win game and we won.”

The win was not without nerves of its own — Haiti pressed late and made a penalty claim that went unrewarded — but Scotland held on. For a team that has historically specialized in arriving at major tournaments and leaving early, opening with three points changes the math of the entire group.

What it means for Group C

The standings now tell a story no one would have written a week ago. Scotland leads with three points. Brazil and Morocco sit level on one, each needing to make up ground. Haiti, the group’s lowest seed, is bottom but not out of it after a competitive defeat.

The practical effect is that Brazil’s margin for error has narrowed before the tournament has really warmed up. The top two teams in each group advance automatically, along with the best third-place finishers across the expanded 48-team field, so a single draw is survivable. But Brazil can no longer treat the group stage as a formality. Its next match becomes a test of whether Ancelotti’s fixes hold, and Morocco — now level with the favorites — has every reason to believe a top-two finish is within reach.

Scotland’s position is the inverse. A team that came in hoping simply to compete now controls its own path to the knockout rounds for the first time in living memory. Win again and the Tartan Army could be looking at something Scottish soccer has never done: getting out of a World Cup group.

The favorites had a hard weekend

Brazil’s stumble did not happen in isolation. Saturday was a rough day for the tournament’s heavyweights more broadly. Australia stunned Türkiye 2-0, with Nestory Irankunda scoring in the 27th minute and Connor Metcalfe adding a second in the 75th. Qatar held Switzerland to a 1-1 draw. Across the schedule, the pattern was the same: teams expected to win comfortably instead found themselves grinding for results or dropping points outright.

That is partly the nature of a World Cup’s first round, when nerves are high and rust is real — Ancelotti himself pointed to a sluggish opening half. It is also a reminder that the gap between soccer’s traditional powers and the rest has kept shrinking. Morocco’s run to the 2022 semifinals was treated as a shock at the time; on Saturday, holding Brazil looked closer to routine.

The tournament’s American hosts, for their part, set a very different tone. The U.S. men’s 4-1 rout of Paraguay to open their home World Cup was the most emphatic start of any host nation in recent memory, the kind of statement Brazil could not match in New Jersey. The contrast underscored how unpredictable the early days have been, and how quickly the established order can wobble.

For Brazil, the path forward is simple to describe and harder to execute: win, and the draw becomes a footnote. For Scotland, the instruction is the same, with far less history weighing on it. The group that was supposed to belong to the favorites now belongs, for the moment, to the team that waited longest to win — playing in stadiums that, a week ago, were better known for record ticket prices that drew subpoenas from New York and New Jersey than for the soccer about to be played in them.