John McGinn: Scotland need ‘miracle’ after Brazil defeat

Scotland's John McGinn reacts after the FIFA World Cup 2026 Group C match at Miami Stadium, Florida.

John McGinn said Scotland’s players fear they are heading home after a 3-0 defeat to Brazil in their final World Cup group game in Miami.

Only the eight best third-placed teams advance to the last 32 and at the final whistle, Scotland sat sixth in that table with 10 groups still to be completed, having followed up the 1-0 win over Haiti in their opening game with two defeats.

An early error by Scott McKenna put Scotland on the back foot from the seventh minute against the five-time world champions, and asked if he feared the tournament was now over, McGinn said: “It’s the way I feel now.

“It’s not the way you want to go out either. We’ll probably hurt tonight, hurt tomorrow and then just keep our fingers crossed.

“If we go into the last 32, if we get a miracle, we’ll need to be better, we know that.

“If you don’t take care of the ball in the big moments and you make mistakes, you get punished – that’s club or international football.” 

He continued: “Brazil punished us tonight. I don’t think overall they opened us up too many times, it was sort of self-inflicted mistakes and I think the scoreline was a fair one.

“It leaves us in the worst possible position from this morning. We gave ourselves a good platform to go and qualify and tonight we’ve made that very difficult. There’s no hiding from that.

“We need a lot to go our way, we will hope, but what we do need to be if we manage to get through is be a lot better.” Midfielder Kenny McLean said losing the early goal after a confident start had put “anxiousness” throughout the squad and said: “Unfortunately we can’t control (our destiny) now.

“We wanted things in our control, our games are done now so it’s a waiting game.

“We’re going to be hoping results go our way, it’s not what you want to do.”