The report says Royal Mail commissioned artist Barry Wilkinson to produce first-class and second-class stamp designs for a potential Scottish victory. One image showed players lifting the World Cup, while another featured celebrating figures beside Scotland’s rampant lion emblem.
The wording was blunt: “SCOTLAND World Cup winners 1978.”
The designs were reportedly approved and scheduled for release on 24 July, but remained in storage after Scotland failed to reach the knockout stage. Their survival offers a rare record of sporting belief before reality intervened.
Scotland arrived as the only home nation at the finals after England failed to qualify. The report says expectations were unusually high, with MacLeod’s squad including Kenny Dalglish, Archie Gemmill, Joe Jordan and Graeme Souness.
The tournament quickly turned:
The victory over the Netherlands restored pride but could not take Scotland through from Group Four. With only 16 countries at the tournament, the margin for recovery was narrow.
The report says MacLeod’s confidence helped explain why victory artwork was commissioned at all. The same belief became part of the story after Scotland’s early exit, with the manager reportedly resigning later that year.
The stamps now stand as a compact symbol of Scottish football’s recurring tension: bold expectation, flashes of brilliance and painful underachievement. They also preserve the mood before the results arrived.
The next chapter for Scotland will be judged in the same unforgiving way - not by the scale of the hope, but by whether the team can turn promise into progress when the next major tournament begins.