First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has denied claims her Government took a lenient approach to Scotland fans ahead of the Tartan Army's trip to Wembley earlier this month.
She insists the demands on the Tartan Army and Rangers supporters who celebrated their team's Scottish Premiership title win in May were exactly the same.
But despite admitting the fans that travelled to London for Euro 2020 have likely contributed to an uptick in Covid cases on their return, Sturgeon insists the difference lies in the actions of both sets of supporters.
Asked at her daily briefing if the Scottish Government could have put more pressure on the SFA to tell fans not to travel, she replied: "We haven't taken a 'softly, softly' approach.
"We were very explicit in saying to fans who didn't have a ticket for Wembley not to travel.
"We can't physically stop every person travelling and significant numbers of people did travel.
"I think there is an association between that and some of the cases we've seen in recent days — Public Health Scotland is doing of an analysis of this and may publish more detail on that in the coming days.
"So we asked people not to travel and that was the case in terms of asking people not to gather in groups when it was Rangers winning the league a few weeks ago.
"Much of the criticism of Rangers after those events were about the damage and the anti-Catholic abuse that was being hurled around that as well and I think it's important we don't forget that aspect of it."
Sturgeon, however, then seemed keen to take the heat off football fans as she called on the population to stick together while the vaccine programme does its job.
She added: "I have, almost literally every day, for 16 months now asked people to do really difficult things and forgo things they desperately want to do.
"People have, by and large, responded magnificently and we need to ask people to continue to do that for a little while longer.
"I know people get frustrated when they see others perhaps not abiding with restrictions as rigidly as they are, and that contributes to a sense of 'why is anybody bothering?'
"But we've all got a vested interest in getting through these next few weeks as safely as possible because the end point is, I believe, firmly in sight.
"However frustrated we are, however angry we feel at other people, this gets more difficult every day but that end point is the one we should be aiming for. We're definitely getting there because of the vaccine."
