Ahead of their friendly against France in Lille, Scotland head coach Steve Clarke spoke about what can be regarded as success for the country at Euro 2024.
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It is a great time to be a Scotland supporter after the nation secured their second successive Euro ticket. The Scottish side clinched a place in next year’s European Championships after Spain narrowly defeated Norway on Sunday. It was a moment that was celebrated massively in Scotland and for understandable reasons too. Since they are not one of the heavyweight nations in the sport, qualifying for a major tournament can be regarded as success in its own way.
Ahead of their friendly against France in Lille, Scotland head coach Steve Clarke spoke about what can be regarded as success for the country at Euro 2024. “I’m not sure Germany is ready for five million Scottish people to turn up but it seems like everybody you speak to is going to be there next summer. I’m sure it won’t be five million but we’ll certainly take a big crowd,” he was quoted as saying by skysports.com ahead of the friendly encounter.
He added: “We want to go there and be successful in the tournament. What is success for Scotland? Probably to be the first Scottish national team to come out of the group stage at a major competition. That’s something we can aspire to in the future, but there’s lots of steps to take before we get to that.”
Steve Clarke then went on to speak about his delight with the manner in which they qualified for the next Euros. “I’m really proud and delighted for my players, they’ve put a lot of work in just over four years in my reign as head coach. It’s fantastic for them to be at the second major finals after such a long barren spell for Scottish football,” he stated.
He further added: “It shows they understand they have to work hard. The last time we qualified for the Euros it was through the play-off system so it felt a little bit like sneaking in the back door. This time we can walk straight in the front door with our heads held high and look forward to hopefully a good tournament next summer.”
The head coach also spoke about how missing out on the World Cup with a playoff defeat spurred them on to do well at the Euro qualification. “We missed out on qualifying for the World Cup by losing in the play-offs which was sore but in this campaign, we’ve shown we’ve learned some lessons from that. Don’t leave it to chance, don’t leave it to a one-off game, try and get yourselves out of the group and we’ve managed to do that. From the beginning I believed this team was good enough to qualify from the group and thankfully they’ve proved me right,” he elaborated.
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