Soccer: Brown - Scotland going for the miracle

Scotland manager Craig Brown has confessed he is still hoping for the footballing miracle that will save his nation's World Cup campaign.

The Scots know they must record a big win at home to Latvia on Saturday to have any chance of making the play-offs.

A seven-goal swing is required to pip Croatia for second place in Group Six and that cannot be achieved without Belgium also winning in Zagreb.

But Brown said he believed miracles do happen in football and even in Scotland, as Kilmarnock proved in 1964.

Killie were paired with mighty Eintracht Frankfurt in the Fairs Cup.

Four years previously, the Germans had taken part in one of the most famous games of all time, the European Cup final at Hampden, where 135,000 saw Real Madrid win 7-3.

No-one was surprised that Killie lost 3-0 in Frankfurt but amazingly they went through to the next round by winning 5-1 in Ayrshire.

Brown said: "I'm not saying it's not possible. What I am saying is that it's unrealistic, a seven-goal swing. We don't score a lot of goals and Latvia don't lose that many.

"It's unrealistic but I have seen miracles happen in Scotland, all the way back to the Kilmarnock-Eintracht game.

"I believe it but if I say it you'll think I'm a loony. So what I'm saying is that we are going to try. We are going to be as positive and as cavalier as we possibly can."

Brown is one of the most conservative managers in the modern game and is a firm adherent of the 3-5-2 system.

It remains to be seen, therefore, what his definition of cavalier will be on Saturday, although he did play centre-back Matt Elliott up front in Riga when a late Neil McCann goal was needed to defeat the Latvians.

He said: "We will need to be cavalier. Unfortunately we were cavalier in the last 10 minutes in Belgium and it cost us another goal.

"We will break from the back, which means we will get the ball forward as fast as we can and support the front players quickly and take a gamble.

"And if we play a back three I will be saying to one of the three 'at all times break and get into a forward position'.

"A lot of the guys are good at that - Christian Dailly is very good at it."