Vogts gets win under his belt at long last
JONATHAN COATES in Hong Kong
 

Kyle opened the scoring for Scotland

Dailly lifts the ball over Hong Kong goalkeeper Ka Ki Chan

Dailly rises highest to power in a header and make it 3-0

Thompson puts Scotland 2-0 up

Gemmill scores his first goal for Scotland following a surging run by Dailly

Maurice Ross

Scotland train hard as they look for their elusive first win under Berti Vogts

ALL’S well that ends well. Scotland’s sweaty sojourn to the Far East concluded yesterday with a satisfying clatter of goals, and a heartening collection of smiles. It has been a hard road, but at last now Berti Vogts knows that managing this team has its perks.

The third opponents on Scotland’s itinerary turned out to provide a dramatic contrast in quality to the first two, but how Scotland rose to the challenge of dismembering them.

The Hong Kong monsoon season left this one alone, but it seemed to rain positives for Vogts. Three players saw their slog rewarded with first international goals, another two sampled their first taste of pulling on the jersey and the manager found that, in his captain, he has a centre-forward in disguise.

As well as feeling happy for Vogts, it was gratifying to see Christian Dailly rid himself of the moniker of leading the team who could not buy a win. Yesterday’s unstinting contribution in defence and attack touted him as someone who could amply fulfil the inspirational responsibilities of Paul Lambert when his tenure as skipper expires.

Dailly, utterly immune to fatigue, scored the third of four goals that nastily undermined the credentials of the Hong Kong League, a header that was as clinically executed as the aesthetically-pleasing strikes provided by Kevin Kyle and Steven Thompson. Scot Gemmill even weighed in with a goal, banishing the demons of a 22-cap career drought.

An impartial observer might have been tempted to focus more on the many inadequacies of the Hong Kong side, both individually and as a unit, but that would be to do a disservice to Scotland. They truly did excel at times against opponents who - for all their limitations - had restricted Turkey to only two goals earlier in the week.

Scotland did what they are always expected to do against the Faroe Islands and San Marino: look technically superior, play liberated, attacking football and win by a clear margin.

Their other two humid outings had left the players drained and exhausted. Towards the end of an impressive first half yesterday, they were even able to conserve energy by taking their foot off the gas and engaging in some one-touch possession play.

Free-kicks and corners, usually delivered by the pedantically precise Gemmill, had until now produced the only goals under Vogts, and with Kyle and Thompson playing together up front and the gargantuan Lee Wilkie advancing from the back, it was to be expected that Scotland would focus their attention herein.

But it was Gemmill, ironically, whose contribution on the run brought the coach his first goal from open play. The Everton midfielder, often quite rightly maligned for his poor form on this stage, was found lurking in unhealthy space at the right of the box by Thompson, after two defenders had made a hash of clearing Robbie Stockdale’s low square.

Despite being at close range, Gemmill lofted a cute cross to the far post, where both strikers had pulled back away from goal. Kyle, better positioned at the rear, shouted and swung his right leg through the ball and sent it powerfully to Hong Kong keeper, Fan Chun Yip’s left.

His strike partner Thompson’s goal had been another swiftly-concocted affair, Kyle chipping forward for Allan Johnston and the winger laying off a simple ball to his right as the Tannadice player ran into the box. Closely stewarded into an angle from which shooting was only an option, he gambled by firing through his marker rather than around him. The ball whistled to Fan’s right when he probably thought he would have to save on the left.

The keeper, with his antics either side of the break, was to provide a small crowd with premium-rate enjoyment. The locals came out to back their representative team this week, but were not reluctant to mock their idiosyncrasies.

Fan, by knuckling a ball out for a corner that the sloppiest of slip fielders could have clutched, then allowing an innocuous cross by Scott Dobie to fly through his legs, made for a touch of circus entertainment as well as displaying the comedic standards of the hosts’ game.

Poor Fan was relieved of his duties shortly after conceding a third. This one was more familiarly contrived, Gemmill floating his free-kick from a central position 35 yards out and Dailly backing into his marker, meeting the ball with the corner of his temple and watching it loop in the air and into the right-hand corner of the net.

A third international goal made the stand-in captain the tourists’ leading scorer, and Dailly was to have a major role in the breakaway fourth.

This coup de grace would not have been possible but for the attentiveness of Rab Douglas, who grabbed a routine corner and flung it up the left wing. Kyle had been the subject of his haste, and the big striker hurtled down the flank.

Kyle ignored the obvious pass to Dobie at the near post and instead picked out Dailly, who had sped with remarkable pace from his defensive duties to avail himself in attack.

He took the ball too far after rounding substitute goalkeeper, Chan Ka Ki, but held his breath and waited for Gemmill to get into a position from which he side-footed the ball beyond the two defenders on the line, hopped gleefully on the back of his captain and raised his right arm in a triumphant style not too dissimilar to that of his father.

The next challenge for Gemmill, as well as the entire squad, is not only to emulate the heroes of the past, but also to get onside with the leading lights of today. Denmark, at Hampden in August, will provide the next acid test.

Scotland: Douglas (Gallacher 77), Stockdale, Weir, Dailly, Wilkie, Ross (Cummings 46), Gemmill (G Alexander 88), Severin, Johnston (Williams 61), Thompson (Dobie 46), Kyle (O’Connor 82). Subs not used: N Alexander, McFadden, Stewart, Caldwell.

Hong Kong: Fan Chun Yip (Chan Ka Ki 54), Yau Kin Wai (Lo Kai Wah 57), Cordeiro, Da Conceicao (Luk Koon Pong 34), Hartwig, McKeown, Shum Kwok Pui (Kwok Man Tik 46), Chan Ho Man (Yeung Ching Kwong 78), Udebuluzor (Yeung Hei Chi 46), Poon Yiu Cheuk (Lee Wai Man 78), Filho.

Ref: R Krishnan (Malaysia).