GLASGOW, Scotland — At 93, she still likes to drink, smoke and chant salty soccer slogans.
Moira Brown — probably the oldest member of Scotland's Tartan Army of fans — still manages the stairs up to her third-floor apartment in central Glasgow, where the walls are plastered with soccer memorabilia. She still manages transatlantic air travel too — so well, she says, that she only needs a carry-on bag.
"At my age, am I not lucky?" asks Brown. "I waited almost 30 years to see another World Cup. Now I'm the luckiest person in this world."
This is the first World Cup Scotland has qualified for since 1998. It's the fourth that Brown is attending in person. Traveling to the United States with fellow Glaswegian fans, she's got tickets to all of Scotland's group stage matches: two near Boston and one in Miami.
Kickoff in Scotland's opener versus Haiti is at 9 p.m. ET Saturday, and Brown will be in the stands.
She got her first taste of soccer nearly 90 years ago
Born on Christmas Eve 1932, Brown got her first glimpse of soccer in the mid- to late-1930s, she says.
"Young girls didn't go to the football [games] back then, let alone play," Brown recalls. "But my dad took me."
It was a club match in Motherwell, Scotland — and from that very young age, she was hooked.
She went on to see Scotland beat its archrivals England at Hampden Park, Scotland's national stadium, in a 1946 "Victory International," staged to celebrate the end of World War II.
Since then, in between working as a nurse and teacher and raising a family, Brown has traveled the world — from Japan to Peru to Morocco — following the Scottish national teams, both the men and the women.
"I've been to the best places, and I've been in some of the worst dive bars around the world!" she says, laughing.
She's hoping this World Cup lives up to the best one she ever saw — more than half a century ago. "The best real-life final I have ever seen live? '74 Germany and Holland," she recalls. West Germany, the host of the 1974 World Cup, won that epic game — and the Cup.
Brown has close-cropped gray hair, and often wears Scotland football jerseys. She's not into fashion or fine dining. "I've got all the clothes I need. This is me! If I'm not going out, sometimes I'm still in my jammies," she says. Football tickets are the one thing she spends money on.
Following decades of Scotland's "glorious failure"
While ancient forms of soccer were played more than 2,000 years ago in China and Mesoamerica, England usually gets credit for inventing the modern game. It's where the rules were written down by 19th century schoolboys. But the tactics teams everywhere use now — with short, frequent passing — developed late in that century in Scotland.
"The style was very different. England almost played rugby with their feet — strong shoulder charges, big tackles," says Andy Kerr, visitor attraction manager at the Scottish Football Museum. "But the Scots played what we call the short passing game, which has gone on to take the world by storm."
Scotland has the world's oldest national football trophy. It was Scottish migrant workers who first exported the game to current powerhouses like Brazil and Argentina.
Scotland also gave the world Alex Ferguson, the sport's most-decorated teamhttps://www.beinsports.com/en-us/soccer/articles/the-most-successful-managers-in-football-history-and-the-legacy-they-built-2026-03-24manager. But Ferguson moved south for glory, with Manchester United, in the land of Scotland's archrivals: England.
"The English Premier League is the most famous and the most monied league in all of the world. So in Scotland, sometimes it does feel a bit like being a poor relation who's on the outside," Kerr says.
Scotland "sees itself as a footballing nation," says soccer commentator Pat Nevin, who played for the Scottish national team, as well as various clubs in Scotland and England, including Chelsea and Everton. But Scotland has never made it past the group stage of any tournament. And for nearly three decades, it didn't even qualify to play in the World Cup.
Fans like Moira Brown call it "glorious failure."
So last November, when Scotland beat Denmark to qualify for this tournament, "it really was one of the most spectacular days in modern Scottish history!" Nevin says, laughing. "I'm not exaggerating at all."
A billboard soon went up in central Glasgow with two words: "We're in."
Scottish fans' reputation has changed over the years
Decades ago, the Tartan Army had a bad reputation as beer-guzzling ruffians.
"They were seen as dangerous — maybe with a hint of violence behind them — and not well behaved, mostly drunk," Nevin recalls.
Brown says she almost got into a "standup, knockdown, all-out fight" decades ago at an international match in Croatia. When another fan called her "an old git," the Tartan Army closed ranks around her.
"They said, 'You say another word to Moira, and I'll plant one on you!' And I had to say, 'Guys, guys, settle down,'" Brown proudly recalls.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as violent fan hooliganism spread in England, Nevin says Scotland fans tacked the other way, differentiating themselves by being nice, making friends with everyone — and throwing a good party.
"I urge anyone in the U.S., if you know there's going to be a Scotland game in your city, go! You don't need tickets. Just go look for the lads in plaid, listen for the bagpipes," Nevin says. "You will have the most joyous, fun party you could ever imagine!"
There may be something special about having no expectations.
The lyrics of one of Scotland's fan anthems, "No Scotland, No Party," acknowledge: "Nobody's saying we're gonna win it, we know we ain't no Argentina!"
Brown says she's hoping Scotland makes it out of the group stage. That would be historic.
"I go always in hope, but often not in expectation," she says. "Strange things can happen!"
No matter what happens with Scotland in this World Cup, there's always the next one — when Brown will be 97.
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