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.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.Brow...