Roxburgh’s Conejo – Scotland’s opener at Italia ’90 against Costa Rica in Genoa ended in a shock humiliation when Luis Gabelo Conejo produced a career-defining performance, nullifying a Scotland side that had dominated chances but got punished by an early second-half turnover.
It was the night before Scotland’s opening match of Italia ’90 against Costa Rica in Genoa. and the atmosphere in the team hotel in Rapallo felt at odds with what was waiting the next day. Ally McCoist and Alan McInally shared a room. McCoist sat at a desk doing the crossword with a puzzled look fixed on his face. while McInally stretched out on his bed. yawned. then executed a verbal nutmeg.
“Is there any chance of putting the light out?” McInally asked. “Some of us have got a game tomorrow.”
The humour in that coastal town was there for a reason. Scotland were set to play a perceived inferior side in a World Cup opener—one they had no trouble believing they could control. But the seeds of what would become a brutal defeat were already planted. with Andy Roxburgh’s team selection sitting at the centre of it.
The puzzlement began the previous day when Roxburgh read out the team to face the Central Americans. The manager. famously the only man who referred to McInally as “Nally. ” said “Nally” and McCoist misheard it as “Ally.” Given McInally’s season-long partnership with Maurice Johnston at Rangers. many assumed Johnston would start—and he did. with Roxburgh’s thinking built around what Costa Rica’s goalkeeper. Luis Gabelo Conejo. was supposedly unable to do.
Roxburgh told his players that the 30-year-old was physically weak and reluctant to come for crosses. His plan was straightforward: feed McInally and let him win the aerial battles, then harvest the second balls. The World Cup debutants, in that view, would be there for the taking.
But defender Dave McPherson later summed up what went wrong with a line that still carries the sting: “The guy was like a flying salmon.” Conejo came and picked everything out of the air.
Scotland’s misfortune wasn’t just that Conejo made saves. He played the sort of match that changes the mood of a tournament. Conejo was voted man of the match, pulled off a string of outstanding stops, and would later be nominated as one of the players of the tournament.
For a Scotland side that dominated possession and fashioned a bucketload of chances—most of which fell to Maurice Johnston—they could not find a way past the inspired figure in goal. Even with Roxburgh’s side coming in as favourites for a straightforward opener, the game refused to open for them.
The killer moment arrived early in the second half. and it came from the worst kind of Scotland mistake: Alan McInally cheaply losing the ball. Maurice Malpas tried to jockey Hector Marchena into the centre of the pitch but couldn’t intercept. Marchena then found Claudio Jara on the edge of the penalty area.
From there, Costa Rica delivered the kind of execution that punishes impatience. Jara used a clever back-heel to play in Juan Cayasso. Cayasso clipped the ball beyond Jim Leighton to score with his side’s first effort on goal. It was clearly onside, and it was instantly game-changing.
By that point, Scotland’s problems weren’t only footballing—they were emotional. For the 10. 000-strong Tartan Army inside Luigi Ferraris Stadium. the remainder of the match became “an episode of torture.” With 41 minutes to retrieve the situation. panic set in. Roxburgh’s players couldn’t do right for doing wrong. Conejo remained equal to everything they threw at him.
Richard Gough succumbed to injury at half-time, depriving Scotland of one of their major set-piece threats. When Ally McCoist belatedly entered the fray, the outcome felt fated. With Sweden and Brazil still to come. Scotland had managed to lose the most winnable game of the group stage against a supposed no-hoper.
When Roxburgh and the players walked through the tunnel, the supporters made their anger impossible to miss. Tartan scarves were thrown at the manager in disgust, and the familiar cry cut through the noise: “What a load of rubbish!”
After the match, Roxburgh—himself a former schoolteacher—pointed to a 19-4 shot count to mitigate what had happened. He should have saved his breath. Scotland’s defeat carried the weight of humiliation on a scale compared to their opening loss to Peru in Argentina 12 years previously.
There was no getting away from the central issue: Roxburgh had got his team wrong, believing Conejo was a weak link, and that belief had been completely misplaced.
For all that, Roxburgh wasn’t accused only of arrogance. Unlike Ally MacLeod in 1978, Roxburgh had tried to scout Costa Rica as thoroughly as possible. The difficulty was structural: every player in Scotland’s squad was home-based. making information harder to come by than it is in later eras. In the lead-up. Bora Milutinovic’s Costa Rica organised closed-door matches and practised tactics endlessly. leaving Roxburgh with only limited visibility.
Maurice Malpas looked back at that before-and-after reality: “I don’t think we underestimated them,” he said. “It was just a case that we didn’t really know too much about them.” He added that it wasn’t like “today. ” when opponents can be watched as often as possible. Scotland had match reports on Costa Rica and Roxburgh had them watched as often as he could. “Looking back, getting them in the first game at that World Cup wasn’t the advantage we thought we were. They were technically very gifted.”.
McPherson didn’t completely absolve the coaching staff. He insisted Scotland had enough knowledge and ability to get the job done. and argued that it wasn’t all on the training ground. “It wasn’t all on the coaching staff,” he said. “As players. we were experienced enough and should have slowed the play down. shown greater patience and settled for getting the ball wide and delivering greater quality into the box.”.
He also framed what was missing: “We put in plenty of endeavour and sweat that day. but lacked quality in our final delivery and the element of luck and good fortune any side needs to win a game of football.” He returned to the build-up too: “We weren’t arrogant in the build-up. and we didn’t suffer from nerves on the day. We didn’t underestimate Costa Rica either.”.
Even that clarity didn’t stop the public reaction from turning vicious. The Central Americans were widely seen as one of the poorest sides in the competition. Their squad included part-time farmers, bank clerks and petrol pump attendants.
Their presence wasn’t supposed to be a threat—especially after the route to qualification. Costa Rica had qualified for the first time. aided by CONCACAF heavyweights Mexico being banned by FIFA for fielding ineligible players. When Costa Rica then lost to Wales in a warm-up game. everything appeared to point toward a straightforward Scotland win in their fifth successive appearance at the World Cup.
Ahead of the tournament, Maurice Johnston’s side had even heard confidence from Richard Gough. Asked about reaching the knock-out round for the first time before Luciano Pavarotti cleared his throat. Gough raised no eyebrows when he said: “I believe that winning the opening game will be enough. A draw wouldn’t be a disaster. but a defeat would be regarded as a catastrophe by the entire country and have such a devastating effect on the players that we would not recover.”.
McPherson added: “We were expected to win the opening game comfortably, maybe even by two or three goals.”
The morning after all of that expectation met reality, one tabloid headline summed up the national mood perfectly—“Stop the world — we want to get off.”
If that defeat was the collapse, the response inside the camp only deepened the sense of chaos. Roxburgh, keen to keep spirits light ahead of the do-or-die Sweden clash, gave the players the night off. Johnston and Jim Bett didn’t need a second invitation. They were snapped drinking champagne with local females and splashed across the front pages.
It was a quick escalation at a time when emotions had already shifted from jubilation to anger.
Malpas later described how quickly the mood outside the team changed too. “The day after the game. we had some free time and a few of us went into a village for a bit of lunch. ” he recalled. “It soon became clear just how angry the Scotland supporters were — they really didn’t like us or want to see us.” He said the Scottish fans weren’t normally like that. adding: “The Scottish fans are not normally like that — they usually managed to find the positive side of things in my experience. But the guys we encountered that day couldn’t see the positive side of anything.”.
Scotland had to live with the humiliation and carry it forward. As they had done in previous campaigns in Germany. Argentina. Spain and Mexico. they again “took it the distance.” Roxburgh’s men bounced back with a magnificent win over Sweden in Genoa. leaving matters in their own hands before facing Brazil in Turin.
Yet again, hope proved costly. Müller’s late strike, following a Leighton error, settled a tense match against Brazil. Elimination was only confirmed later once other results went against Scotland.
By then, the feelings were blunt. “To be honest, I think we all just wanted to come home by that stage,” Malpas said.
Costa Rica, meanwhile, carried on with no such concerns. They finished second ahead of Scotland and Sweden. They comprehensively lost their knockout game to Czechoslovakia in Bari. but their summer run later became a feature film—turning what began as a “no-hoper” narrative into something far bigger.
For Scotland, the tournament became a familiar taste: humiliation, redemption and heartache layered on top of each other in quick succession. All of it started with one selection gamble in Rapallo, and one goalkeeper who refused to be the weak link Roxburgh expected.
And for the Tartan Army, the nightmares still have a name—Juan Cayasso’s finish, Jim Leighton beaten, and Luis Gabelo Conejo flying through the air like a man who had decided Scotland’s opener would belong to someone else.
Scotland Costa Rica Italia 90 Andy Roxburgh Luis Gabelo Conejo Juan Cayasso Jim Leighton Maurice Johnston Alan McInally Ally McCoist Dave McPherson Richard Gough Hector Marchena Claudio Jara World Cup 1990