John McGinn was delighted to get on the Scotland scoresheet – but the Aston Villa man was equally happy to avoid injury and an offside in doing so.
The Aston Villa midfielder scored an overhead kick four minutes from time to secure a 2-2 draw with Austria in Scotland’s opening World Cup 2022 qualifying match. McGinn was content with a point and thrilled with his leveller.
He said: “I am relieved I’ve not broke my neck attempting it! I thought I was offside! I think one positive of VAR down the road is you play until the ball is in the back of the net so that was going through my head.
“I think before I would have just stopped if I thought I was offside but thankfully I didn’t. I didn’t know I was as flexible as that and it got us a point in the end. I’ve never scored one like that before, I’m not usually that far forward but the gaffer made a couple of changes, the set piece came back in from a good header and I’m delighted to score again.
“I am happy we got a point with the late goal, although we’re disappointed we didn’t win the game. I don’t think we were as good as we can be but I think it shows how far we’ve come. You see Austria tonight blowing out of their backsides at the end because we threw everything at them.
“It maybe took us a bit too long to suss them out in the first half but we have quality players. Now it’s just about belief. Moving forward, if we have the confidence then we can go and be successful – we showed it in November.”
NTOF now offers a YouTube channel featuring exclusive interviews, post-match discussion, in-depth debate, and much more – LIKE and SUBSCRIBE and don’t miss any of our videos.