It took Sebastien Pocognoli three games to get there, but Scotland finally have a win under their new head coach. A first international goal for Kieron Bowie and a John McGinn penalty were enough to beat North Macedonia 2-0 in Skopje, on the night Andy Robertson won his 100th cap.
The score looks slim for what was close to a one-sided evening. Scotland laid siege to the home goal for long spells and might have scored several more. They also finished with ten men for the second game running, which made the last stretch more nervous than it needed to be.
Bowie scores early, Robertson denied
The opening goal came after seven minutes. Billy Gilmour slid the ball to Bowie on the edge of the area, and the striker controlled it on a poor surface, moved it onto his left foot and hit a thumping shot across the goalkeeper into the bottom corner. It was Bowie's first goal for his country.
Robertson then had a night worth remembering for other reasons. The Tottenham left-back became only the second man to win 100 Scotland caps, behind Kenny Dalglish on 102, and he nearly marked it with a goal. Stole Dimitrievski produced a world-class reaction save to keep him out, and the North Macedonia goalkeeper was busy all evening. He twice denied Ben Gannon-Doak when scoring looked the easier option, and a dog wandered onto the pitch at one point, dodging the home defence rather neatly before running off.
VAR, a handball and McGinn's penalty
The second half carried on in the same vein. Gannon-Doak missed the best chance of the night when through on goal, and then went down in the box. A penalty was given and then taken away after a long video review. Scotland did not have to wait long for another. During a frantic scramble, Scott McKenna headed off a post, referee Francois Letexier went to the monitor, and after some confusion around the stadium he pointed to the spot for a handball by Bojan Miovski.
McGinn took it and sent Dimitrievski the wrong way. The goal came on 69 minutes and was his first for Scotland since the World Cup strike against Haiti in Boston, which was the country's last goal before this match. Scotland had gone through a long run without finding the net, so the relief was easy to understand.
A late red card and what it means
With seven minutes to play McKenna was shown a straight red card for a lunge on the advancing Gjorge Dzhekov. It was the second game in a row Scotland have ended a man short, after Jack Hendry's sending-off against Switzerland, and it forced Pocognoli's side to hunker down for the final ten minutes. It is something the coach will want to talk about this week.
Still, there was a lot to like. Bowie, Stephen Welsh and Luis Binks, all new to the group, were excellent, and the performance had far more of the control and forward intent Scotland showed in the second half in Ljubljana a week earlier. North Macedonia have now scored just two goals in 11 games, are winless in ten and sit bottom of the group, so the standard of opposition deserves a mention. But the process Pocognoli keeps talking about finally has a result to go with it, and Slovenia are next on Tuesday.
Match facts: North Macedonia 0-2 Scotland, UEFA Nations League, League B Group 1, Todor Proeski Arena, Skopje, Saturday 3 October 2026. Goals: Bowie 7', McGinn 69' (penalty). Red card: McKenna 83' (Scotland). Half-time: 0-1. Source: BBC Sport.
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