Late drama as Scotland and Austria share four goals

A superb John McGinn strike rescued a point for Scotland after a dramatic second half against Austria.

The teams shared four goals in the second half to start their World Cup qualifying campaign but it was McGinn’s late leveller, a bicycle kick which nestled into the bottom corner, which will live long in the memory

Austria came close to opening the scoring in the 17th minute after good work from Sasa Kalajdzic and Christoph Baumgartner but David Marshall made a good low save.

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Scotland’s best chance of the first half came when Austria goalkeeper Alexander Schlager gave the ball away to Lyndon Dykes. The Aussie-born striker teed up Ryan Christie but Schlager made the save.

Austria broke the deadlock nine minutes into the second half when Florian Grillitsch’s long ranger was parried into the path of Kalajdzic who fired over Marshall into the net.

Scotland nearly bit back immediately though. It looked like Stefan Ilsanker fouled Christie in the penalty area but the referee waved away the penalty appeals.

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Armstrong broke again down the left but his shot whistled across the face of goal.

It looked like Kalajdzic had doubled Austria’s lead on the hour mark when he bundled the ball into the net, but a foul in the build-up on Kieran Tierney saw it disallowed.

Scotland continued to pressure the Austria defence and they eventually got the equaliser when Grant Hanley headed from Stephen O’Donnell’s free kick.

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It was not level for long though as Kalajdzic headed in to grab his second of the match with just 10 minutes remaining.

Scotland did get a hard-earned point though, as McGinn directed a superb bicycle kick into the bottom right corner to score the best goal of the game.

Attention now turns to Sunday evening when Scotland travel to Israel.

Cover Photo: Flag of Scotland by Christoph Strassler used under license by CC BY-SA 2.0.

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1 Response

  1. 13/05/2021 16:27

    […] Late drama as Scotland and Austria draw […]

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