Coatbridge bhoys John Herron and Tony Watt were the Scotland heroes in Holland this afternoon as the u-20 side qualified for the semi-finals of the Den Haag youth tournament.
After opening the tournament with a 0-0 draw with Manchester City last night midfielder Herron scored the only goal of the game in the 1-0 lunchtime win over hosts Den Haag.
With Den Haag and Manchester City drawing in mid afternoon it meant that Scotland and Cruzeiro were assured of going through as the top sides in Group A before they faced each other in the final group match.
After a goal-less first half Watt broke the deadlock only for Franco to equalise and send the Brazilians through as group winners.
Scotland will now play the Mexican national side in the semi-final tomorrow. The other semi-final is between Cruzeiro and Borussia Monchegladbach who won a play-off penalty shoot out against Club Brugge after the two teams had finished on six points with identical goal differences.
The tournament consists of matches of 60 minutes and is one of the more established continental tournaments with this season being the 59th year that the competition has been run.
As well as Watt and Herron there are six other Celtic players in the Scotland squad highlighting the success of the club’s Academy programme.
Herron, Mikey Miller, Joe Chalmers and Marcus Fraser were all members of Celtic’s 2011 Glasgow Cup winning u-17 squad while Jamie Lindsay, Lewis Kidd and Stuart Findlay were part of this season’s u-17 squad with Callum McGregor winning the u-19 title for the third year running.
There was disappointment for Filip Twardzik yesterday as the Czech Republic lost 2-1 to France in the opening match of the u-19 European Championships.
The competition is being held in the Czech Republic with their next matches against Holland and Norway.
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