So Scotland now know. The dream of making it to the World Cup knockouts for the first time in their history is over.
Scotland won't go through as one of the top-ranked third teams, following a 3-0 defeat to Brazil on the back of a 1-0 loss to Morocco in a tricky Group C. A tournament-opening win over Haiti was not enough, and their fate was sealed on Saturday.
Here's how it all went wrong for Steve Clarke's side.
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Where Scotland finished in third-place rankings
A 48-team World Cup opened up several more opportunities to make it through to the knockouts. Instead of 16 teams advancing to the first knockout round as per previous tournaments, 32 will make it out of the group stage in 2026. Not only will all 12 group winners and 12 second-placed teams advance, but also the eight best third-place teams.
This is how the standings ended.
How were the best third-place teams be determined?
Unlike the group stage rankings where the first tiebreaker is head to head record, third-place teams in the group stage were ranked by these criteria, in order:
1. Points
2. Goal difference
3. Goals scored
4. Team conduct score
5. FIFA world ranking
What did Scotland need to happen?
After Senegal's win over Iraq and Egypt's failure to beat Iran, Scotland dropped down to 10th place -- meaning they needed a lot of help from teams above them, and some below, if they were going to make it through.
Opta gave them just a 0.07% chance of qualification before Saturday's games, and Scotland's fate was sealed when Ghana failed to beat Croatia by three goals -- instead losing 2-1 in Group L.
Scotland's hopes were hit significantly following South Africa's win against South Korea on Wednesday, Ecuador's over Germany on Thursday and Egypt's failure to beat Iran on Friday.
Before those games, one path for Scotland to advance was South Africa not beating South Korea, Germany beating Ecuador, Spain beating Uruguay and Egypt beating Iran. But that's long gone, now.