McGinn treble as Scotland beat San Marino

John McGinn scored his first career hat-trick as Scotland ended a run of four defeats with a straightforward win over San Marino at a sodden Hampden.

McGinn, 24, became the first Scotland player to score a first-half treble since Lawrie Reilly in 1952.

Lawrence Shankland and Stuart Findlay marked their first starts with goals.

Stuart Armstrong’s free-kick added a late sixth as the pressure on head coach Steve Clarke was eased following Thursday’s 4-0 defeat by Russia.

The win moves his side up to fourth in Group I, above Kazakhstan who lost at home to Belgium.

With Cyprus being beaten by Russia, the Scots are now one point behind the side who they face next month in Nicosia before finishing at home against the Kazakhs.

Scotland can still qualify for their first major tournament since 1998 via the Euro 2020 play-offs, which begin in March, having earned the chance to progress by winning their Nations League group last year.

Plenty positives for relentless Scots

It would be easy to dismiss this as a meaningless victory, but Scotland must take every crumb of comfort they can muster currently. And in any case, it would be wrong not to acknowledge all that was good about this performance, regardless of the calibre of opposition.

From the get-go, Scotland were at it, swarming forward and peppering the visitors’ goal with early shots, most notably when James Forrest picked out Shankland, who must have thought he had opened his international scoring account when the ball left his boot only for Aldo Simoncini to pull off a wondrous save to deny him.

Scotland could easily have been two or three up even before they did make the 12th-minute breakthrough. Captain Andy Robertson arrowed a diagonal ball from left to right, which was killed stone-dead by the impressive Ryan Christie. He drifted inside before delivering a low ball across goal, which may have found its way in even without the slightest of nicks off the boot of McGinn.

That gave the stoic supporters something to cheer and they would have been heartened too by the positivity of Scott McTominay, who was pivotal in Scotland and McGinn’s second. The Manchester United midfielder weaved his way inside the box and though his low cross from the left did not immediately pick out a team-mate, Simoncini diverted it into the path of McGinn who stroked into the unguarded net.

McTominay was superbly denied a goal of his own before McGinn’s joy was elevated further when Findlay headed down Christie’s umpteenth corner for the Aston Villa midfielder to spin and hammer past the goalkeeper from four yards out.

Scotland were as relentless as the teeming rain in the first half, but the inundation began to pose a real threat to the game being concluded, with the ball consistently sticking on the sodden turf. That affected the fluidity of Scotland’s play, which was a pity given the football they had shown they were capable of.

Thankfully for McGinn, the referee allowed the game to continue and soon Shankland was also grateful to the French official Jerome Brisard. The excellent McTominay rattled the bar with a terrific, dipping drive from long range and it fell kindly to the Dundee United frontman to tap in amid claims of offside.

Moments later Findlay had his debut goal – a towering leap to meet Christie’s corner and head into the net. Defensively the Scots had to little to do to judge Findlay or Mikey Devlin as a central pairing, while full-backs Robertson and Liam Palmer did most of their work in attacking areas.

For once, there were no Scottish failures and Armstrong came off the bench to round off a good night with a splendid free kick, finding the top corner from 25 yards. Job done for Scotland on a night they had little to gain.

Man of the match – Scott McTominay

It would have been easy to give McGinn the award – and he was one of a number of impressive performers – but McTominay stood above them all, even when the boggy surface made running with the ball and passing virtually impossible.

His languid running style and quick feet give him a graceful air and he brushed opponents aside with ease. What he and his team-mates must do now is show they can perform against a higher quality of opposition.

Match stats

• Scotland have won all eight of meetings with San Marino by an aggregate score of 27-0. This was the biggest of those eight victories
• They scored double the number of goals in this win over San Marino (six) than they had managed in their first five games under Clarke (three)
• San Marino have conceded 43 goals across their eight 2020 European Championship qualifiers, seven more than in their 10 games in qualifying for the 2016 finals (36)
• This was Scotland’s biggest win in any competition since October 2015, when they beat Gibraltar 6-0, also in a European Championship qualifier
• McGinn scored the fifth hat-trick by a Scotland player this century, and the first since James Forrest against Israel in November last year
• Shankland and Findlay have become the first players to score on their first international starts for Scotland since Ikechi Anya did so against Macedonia in September 2013

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