To the relief of Scottish fans a 4-2 play-off victory against Denmark means their nation will feast at football’s top table this summer in the USA, thanks to a man who cut his playing and coaching teeth at Stamford Bridge.

The current Scotland boss, Steve Clarke, was a long-serving defender and multiple trophy-winning assistant coach at Stamford Bridge, representing his nation six times between 1987 and 1994 – though missing out on international sport’s greatest stage despite his country making five consecutive appearances between 1974 and 1990.

The closest Clarke came was in May 1990, when the versatile defender had helped Chelsea secure a fifth-place finish in Division One.

‘I was in the pre squad for Italia 90,’ he recalled after his appointment as Scotland’s head coach in May 2019. ‘Andy Roxburgh took 26 players to Genoa for a camp in the February. I was one of the ones that missed out from that 26. It still hurts me now. I have a chance to put that right with this job.’

And now Jose Mourinho’s former assistant will be the first Scot to navigate his country through a World Cup finals since Craig Brown did just that in France in 1998.

Clarke is just one of the great Scots woven into the Chelsea tapestry over the years.

In fact, after England, no nationality has donned the famous royal blue more times than players from north of the border, with France then Brazil some way behind.

But the Blues’ pantheon of heroes also has more than its fair share of Caledonian colossi who, like Clarke, sadly never graced the Mondiale with their presence – either through Scotland failing to qualify or turning down the invitation, or the personal choices of the national manager.

The club dubbed ‘Little Caledonia’ soon after its formation in 1905 has boasted legends such as original player-manager Jacky Robertson, skipper Andy Wilson, keeper Johnny Jackson, Thirties trio Hugh Gallacher, Alec Cheyne and Alex Jackson, Tommy Walker, John Harris, Johnny McNichol, Bill Robertson, Charlie Cooke, Eddie McCreadie, David Hay, Pat Nevin, David Speedie, Gordon Durie, and John Spencer.

Clarke himself ranks ninth in appearances for the club with 421, 1970s left-back and 1970s boss McCreadie is just two places lower with 410, while Championship-winning keeper Robertson managed a 15th-best clean sheets tally of 38.

Five Scots make Chelsea’s all-time goalscorers list – troubled marksman Gallacher is 14th with 81 and McNichol, 66, Speedie, 64, Durie, 63, and Wilson, 61, all make the top 30.

Despite such talent, the royal blue presence at World Cup tournaments has been almost as elusive and unpredictable as mist in the glen.

Scotland’s debut appearance in FIFA’s summer tournament in 1954 featured a squad of 13 and one of those slots was filled by future Chelsea player and manager Tommy Docherty.

The gritty midfielder later recalled how everything in Switzerland seemed stacked against the Scots, a ‘shambles’ leading to the mid-tournament of manager Andy Beattie.

‘The heat was incredible and we were drenched in sweat,’ remembered The Doc of their manager-less clash with Uruguay. ‘At half-time we had to get in to a lukewarm bath to cool down. We just weren't prepared.

‘We weren't given a run down on who were their dangerous players or anything like that. Although I was told to man-mark their star player, Juan Alberto Schiaffino, no one told me how good he was. I couldn't get near him.’

Uruguay’s 7-0 win that day in Basel remains Scotland’s heaviest defeat in the finals.

Docherty was joined at the Sweden World Cup in 1958 by Scottish Football Hall of Famer Bobby Evans, who would join the ‘Kilts of the King’s Road’ from Celtic in 1960. The squad was supposed to be managed by Matt Busby – who fondly remembered his days as a wartime guest player at the Bridge.

But injuries sustained by Busby in the Munich air crash tragedy meant first-team trainer Dawson Walker stepped up. Flame-haired Evans played all three games – a draw and two losses.

Chelsea’s only Flower of Scotland when they contested the 1974 tournament in then West Germany was 26-cap David Hay, a club and Scottish record £225,000 signing from Celtic four days before the final in July 1974.

The Tartan Army had already flown home by then but cultured midfielder Hay had been their most impressive performer. So there was huge concern when later that month the Blues new signing was briefly reported missing while holidaying in Cyprus just as a deadly civil war broke out.

Safely returned home, Hay’s leadership and drive were a revelation until curtailed by an eye injury. Otherwise he might be right up there with the Blues’ most revered Caledonians.

Sadly, no Stamford Bridge favourites were on the march with Ally’s Army in 1978, and none had a dream in 1982, but Scotland’s national team call-up helped create an understanding between the Blues’ previously warring Scots Pat Nevin and David Speedie.

The SFA were unaware the Chelsea stars – who would form a formidable attacking trident at the Bridge with England striker Kerry Dixon – disliked each other and billeted the teammates in the same room.

Thrown together, the pair talked things through and patched up their problems – to the huge benefit of the mid-eighties Blues sides.

However, it did not prevent them both missing out when Scotland Alex Ferguson drew up his final selections for Mexico 1986.

‘Sir Alex had brought me into the squad and I played against England,’ Nevin later remembered. ‘It was tight – Scotland had a serious amount of top forwards.

‘Sir Alex Ferguson phoned me up just before it and said: “Look, I’m really sorry, I’m not going to take you to this one. We’ve got a really strong squad. But you’ll be the first man we phone up if anything goes wrong”.

‘I went into training the next day and met David Speedie at Chelsea and he said to me: “I got a call from Sir Alex Ferguson last night. He said he’s not taking me but he says I’m the first man he’s going to bring”.’

However, April 1986 had seen Gordon Durie relocate to west London from Hibernian for around £380,000 and he earned the first of his 43 Scotland caps a year later. So it was that in 1990 bustling 24-year-old forward became Chelsea’s first serving player to grace the world stage for the home of the brave.

Durie must have felt at home amongst his fellow countrymen in SW6 – alongside Nevin and Speedie were Doug Rougvie, Joe McLaughlin, John McNaught, Kevin McAllister and John Millar, while Ian McNeill was the latest among dozens of coaches to have steered the club over the years.

The signing of ‘Jukebox’ initially increased rumours of the departure from the Bridge of Golden Boot co-winner and 1986 England World Cup squad member Kerry Dixon, but the pair would form a fine attacking relationship until the Scot’s acrimonious departure to Tottenham in 1991.

Also in the Italia 90 mix was prolific goalscorer Robert Fleck, who would become Norwich’s record sale at the time of his switch to Stamford Bridge two years later.

However it would be ‘ciao, Italia’ in the group stage for the unlucky Scots.

Durie’s World Cup duties continued in surprising fashion when injuries to other players saw him called up at 24 hours’ notice to be Scotland’s sole representative in a pre-France 98 friendly between European and Rest of the World XIs at Stade Velodrome in December 1997.

So hasty was the Chelsea man’s involvement that as he ran out the stadium announcer hailed him as ‘Darren Jackson of Celtic’.

‘That day I was in the same team as Zidane, Kluivert, Fernando Hierro,’ Durie recalled. ‘Paul Ince was the English representative so it was all household names. Then obviously on the other side you had the original Ronaldo and Gabriel Batistuta. It was a magic day.’

Craig Brown’s 1998 squad reflected plenty of royal blue Bravehearts: Durie, Tom Boyd, Craig Burley, Neil Sullivan and Jonathan Gould, son of Bobby, assistant coach to Geoff Hurst at the Bridge 18 years earlier.

However, despite the anthem warning the players against such a fate, the Scotland squad came home too soon – an unfortunate Boyd own goal handing them an opening-match loss to Brazil from which they never recovered.

Nineties Blues midfielder Burley, though, netted against Norway to earn the Scots’ solitary point.

And so, finally, to this summer’s 48-club bonanza. Eleven Blues will be representing nine different countries – with past players taking the connections much further.

However, the sad withdrawal through injury of Billy Gilmour – the last Scottish player to represent the Londoners in 2021 – means there will be no Caledonian-Chelsea links in the 2026 competition.