Italia upset

They were probably most people’s choice to finish bottom of Group D behind Italy, Uruguay and England this year, but once again the team ranked 18 places below their nearest group opponents provided one of the shocks of the opening round of matches.

Twenty-four years ago, they did exactly the same, when making their first appearance in the World Cup finals, shocking Scotland in one of the upsets of the tournament.

It wasn’t quite on the scale of Cameroon’s victory over Argentina, but the defeat of a Scotland team captained by Newcastle defender Roy Aitken certainly caused a stir.

In many ways, Scotland had only themselves to blame, with the service to striker Mo Johnston rarely good enough to trouble Costa Rica’s back line, who defended solidly throughout.

And moments after the break, they took a shock lead through striker Juan Arnaldo Cayasso. Hector Marchena made a diagonal run before playing in fellow defender Geovanny Jara and his crafty backheel played in Cayasso to finish past Jim Leighton and give the minors a shock lead in Genoa.

There were still 40 minutes to go and many still expected the Scots to come from behind to win, but a team boasting the likes of Ally Mc- Coist, Alan McInally, Stuart McCall and Alex McLeish could not find a way through.

Aitken had signed for the Magpies in January that year after 14 years at Celtic.

He made his league debut on January 13 in a thrilling 5-4 win over Leicester City at St James’ Park and went on to make 54 league appearances, scoring one goal.

Then Newcastle manager Jim Smith had to be patient in order to get his man, though, with an article from the Scottish Herald dated December 9, 1989, saying Celtic would accept nothing less than £500,000 for their man.

Clearly irritated by Newcastle’s transfer dealings, manager Billy McNeill had this to say: “It would appear Newcastle want to do their business through newspapers.

There has been no bid from anybody.”