"Hopefully the draw will be finished in time for the kick off of the first game in June,' said BBC commentator Jonathan Pearce as a painful spectacle dragged on inside Washington DC's Kennedy Centre.
At least Steven Caldwell's concerns came to nothing in the end. Capped 12 times for Scotland the 45-year-old from Stirling now provides match analysis for Canada's biggest sports broadcasting network TSN and spent the weeks leading up to the World Cup draw fretting over a possible conflict of interest.
"I don't know why but I actually had a sneaky feeling Scotland might land up in Canada,' he told Herald Sport.
"I was particularly hopeful that they would make it to this tournament and maybe finish up playing in Toronto.
"That would have been a hard game for me to call because I have a strong affiliation for Canada after 12 years here and I'm probably going to be a Canadian citizen soon.
"So I love this country, but Scotland is my homeland and I think Scotland being at the World Cup makes it a better tournament.
"We also know the Tartan Army are going to come in masses, regardless of whether they only get 10,000 tickets or 20,000."
The most prohibitively expensive World Cup in history, it's hard to be sure on that. While Caldwell was relieved to dodge a game against Canada his fellow countrymen held their heads in their hands as a World Cup Groundhog Day unfolded.
In their last appearance at France 98 the Scots drew Brazil and Morocco. Thanks to a complex series of confederation factors they finished up in the Group of Death. Again.
By the end of a torturous two hours they were paired with Morocco on Friday June 19 in Boston or Philadelphia and Brazil in Atlanta or Miami on Wednesday June 24
Avoiding Italy as the pot four team felt like the smallest of mercies, an opening game against Haiti on Saturday June 13 in Boston or New York failing miserably to paint lipstick on a pig.
While Group C is one of only two to be played out entirely in the same country the distance from Boston to Miami is a mammoth 1500 miles. In the rush to lay roses at the feet of Donald Trump FIFA will lob hard pressed supporters under a bus.
For the Scottish FA delegation inside the Kennedy Centre there was some relief that Trump - son of a MacLeod from the Isle of Lewis - failed to come out in support of Steve Clarke's team, but the ordeal is not over yet. Final venues and kick off times will be resolved today, at which point assistant manager Steven Naismith takes on the task of flying from A to B scoping out the best accommodation and training facilities available.
While the SFA expect to rake in a sum in excess of £10million for qualification for a third major tournament in five years a third of the cash will go towards travel and logistics. Another third will go on player bonuses. The cash will come from the shameless Infantino ripping the replica shirts off the backs of hard pressed fans.
The last time the men's national team qualified for a World Cup finals the team's pre-tournament anthem was Del Amitri's divisive and unloved 'Don't Come Home Too Soon.'
Study the budget busting travel, accommodation and tickets involved in the first MAGA World Cup and the Tartan Army might feel, this time, that they can't come home soon enough.
General admission prices will be split into four categories with briefs for the first match in the USA coming at at anything between £417 and £1662.
The most optimistic members of the Scotland Travel Club might want to note that the cheapest tickets for the final will cost £1510 and the most expensive £4462. Throw in the flights and accommodation and it might be cheaper to take a trip round the world with Phileas Fogg than it would be to watch Scotland return to world football's biggest stage.
"The only downside is the price of ticket which we have spoken about a lot on our podcast," Caldwell acknowledges.
"It's pricing the proper fans out and I do worry that the tournament will be really corporate and restricted to the people who can afford it.
"There will always be a corporate presence but you still have to protect 10,000 or 15,000 genuine fans.
"It's so expensive that you do wonder if people are going to travel, but we need travelling fans to come to matches."
Before providing analysis of Canada's game against Venezuela last month, Caldwell made special provision to watch Scotland seal their place at the finals by beating Denmark. Together with Kevin Kilbane - a Celtic fan - the pair travelled to the TSN studios early and locked themselves in a room to watch the pictures beamed by satellite from Glasgow.
"I mean, we played terrible, but we got there and that really is all that matters.
"I worked with Steve Clarke at Newcastle so I know him reasonably well and root for him.
"Alan Irvine is in there now and he was at Newcastle as well and I keep in touch with him.
"So there are guys I know well who played a big part in my career I want to see do well.
"The way they have gone about it has been excellent, but I just hope we go to the World Cup and go for it a little bit.
"I would rather we drew a game going for it and not getting the points we deserved than sit back being tentative.
"I was so disappointed at the Euros. We looked so anxious and on the back foot that it really affected us. I think if we'd gone for it we'd have qualified."
If anyone knows how hard it is to crack the knack of international football it's Steven Caldwell. In total he reckons that he must have turned up for 40 squads or so, playing just 12 times.
There were no appearances at a major tournament and he describes his Scotland career as 'bittersweet'. The closest he ever came to sampling a World Cup as a player was France 98 when Brazil and Morocco were the opponents again and he missed out on being one of Scotland's hamper boys.
"I was fine with missing out because I thought, 'I'll be playing for Scotland at the next one.'
"But there wasn't a next one. And there wasn't a next one after that either.
"We were at six World Cups out of seven between 1974 and 1998 and we had top players.
"Confidence went, the quality of the players dropped off a little bit and we were on the outskirts for over 20 years."
While Donald Trump used his rambling two minute speech to speak of the 'tremendous enthusiasm' for the tournament in the host nations it was, like so much of what the POTUS says, over-egged.
A solid central defender with Newcastle, Sunderland and Burnley Caldwell ended his career with Toronto FC in 2013 before serving Canada's national team for two years as a coach. A broadcasting natural he covered the last two World Cups in Russia and Qatar and can't wait for the chance to cover his home nation on North American soil. So far, the enthusiasm of the locals has been well concealed.
"I would say it's still a bit niche rather than mainstream in terms of excitement,' he admits.
"We are trying to ramp up the content and tell the stories.
"Our objective is let everyone know what this means and explain it in a very North American way.
"We need them to know that this is not normal games or normal football.
"It's 104 Super Bowls and we need them to know that every game at a World Cup is enormous.
"The minute this thing starts every minute of every game is going to be huge."