In mitigation, Dick Advocaat’s side were as different in mood and fluency from the one we had seen on Saturday as a piece of chalk and a slab of Edam, though it would perhaps be over-egging it to talk of a vintage Dutch display.Vogts admitted he was “embarrassed”, but added, with some justification, that these were the best players available to him. “Apart from a group in the Under-21s who might step up now, this is what we have to work with,” the Scotland manager said.Striving to put a positive spin on a night of unremitting negatives, he added: “It was a very good lesson for the next World Cup qualifying campaign We have to learn from the style and quality of the Dutch. Van der Vaart gave a passable impersonation of Paul Scholes in his role behind the latter’s Manchester United colleague, which is praise indeed.Two defenders, Andre Ooijer and Frank De Boer, joined in the spree, which ended in Scotland’s heaviest defeat since they lost 7-0 to Uruguay at the 1954 World Cup and their first six-goal reverse since England beat them 9-3 at Wembley seven years later. Billy McNeill, who played that day, was left shaking his head from the radio summarisers’ seats.McNeill recovered to win many more caps and lead Celtic to European Cup triumph.

Scotland have come a long way since the early horrors of the Berti Vogts era, but their journey will not be taking in Portugal next summer. The Netherlands were as irresistible last night as they had been ineffectual in the first leg of this Euro 2004 play-off, Ruud van Nistelrooy plundering a hat-trick as an orange tide engulfed the Scots’ defence.
Just as James McFadden and Darren Fletcher had combined to such telling effect in Scotland’s 1-0 win in Glasgow, so Van Nistelrooy profited from the youthful flair of Wesley Sneijder, 19, and Rafael van der Vaart, 20, the local heroes from Ajax picking the Scots apart.Sneijder, a zestful and mature midfielder, marked only his third cap by scoring the opening goal, making the next two before half-time and rattling the crossbar late on. One Latvian player celebrated the goal by grabbing a corner flag and miming gunning down his team-mates. The celebrations prompted the crowd to rain plastic bottles and coins on to the pitch – an incident that is sure to be investigated by Uefa, European football’s ruling body.Verpakovskis sealed the aggregate victory 11 minutes later, running into the penalty area and beating Catkic with a superb right-footed lob under pressure.TURKEY: Catkic; Davala (Sas, 78), Korkmaz, Baris, Belozoglu, Metin (Karadeniz, 60), Kahveci, Kerimoglu (Sanli, 80), Sukur, Mansiz, UzulmezLATVIA: Kolinko; Stepanovs, Astafjevs, Zemlinskis, Laizans, Zirnis, Isakovs, Bleidelis, Verpakovskis, Rubins, Rimkus (Stolcers, 79).Referee: A Frisk (Sweden)..

Latvia enjoyed their share of possession in the first half, but did not create any serious scoring opportunities.The half ended with the Turks pressing for the second goal that would give them the aggregate lead, Nihat Kahveci going only just wide with a bicycle-kick in the 40th minute.Turkey maintained pressure in the second half, and seemed to have taken a decisive step towards the finals when Hakan Sukur, who did not play in the first leg, scored with a deft finish from Gokdeniz Karadeniz’s cross in the 64th minute.Two minutes later, however, Laizans latched on to a free-kick to get Latvia back into the tie. That doesn’t happen everywhere.”La opened the scoring in the 20th minute, his exquisite long-range effort bringing the stadium to life. Substitutes: Radimov (Zenit) for Titov, 59;Referee: M.Gonzalez (Spain).. Maris Verpakovskis scored one goal and set up another as Latvia secured their first trip to the European Championship finals after coming back from 2-0 down to eliminate Turkey, who were semi-finalists in last year’s World Cup finals. Turkey were favourites and I’m very happy that we won,” said the Latvia coach, Aleksandrs Starkovs “Our tactics were successful We played counter-attacking football The Turkish crowd were great They applauded us…