Cuthbert takes comfort from Scotland’s end to qualifying as play-offs start

Scotland midfielder Erin Cuthbert feels they are taking some positive traits into their European Championship play-offs against Hungary.

The Scots play the first leg of their Women’s Euro 2025 play-off semi-final in Budapest on Friday evening.

Having struggled to get a competitive win, Scotland go into the games on the back of five successive victories in their qualifying campaign.

Cuthbert said in a video on the Scotland National Team X account: “We’ve come off the the back of a good qualifying campaign, getting back to getting some really good results as well.

“We’ve shown different sides of our game, we can win comfortably, but then we can also grind out results, like we did against Serbia in July.

“So we have got different sides to our game and I think that can only help us going into the play-offs.”

The Chelsea midfielder stressed the importance of taking Friday’s game in isolation and not thinking about the second leg at Easter Road next Tuesday.

“Of course we want to take a good result back to Scotland,” she said. “I think that’s the main priority.

“We want to win the game. We know Hungary are a good team, they’ve proven with previous results that they can go and get a result against a top team as well.

“So it’s going to be a tough game, they’re going to make it really, really difficult for us.

“But I think just focusing on what we can control, the process, the game in hand. We’re not even thinking about Tuesday or anything beyond that.

“It is solely (Friday) night. We’ve been in play-offs before, some of us, so we know the previous experience, we know what it feels like, and it’s just going that step further.”