Euro 2020 experience will benefit Scots – O’Donnell

Stephen O’Donnell has “a wee bit more optimism” about Scotland’s prospects at Euro 2024 because so many of the squad experienced the last championships along with him.

The Motherwell right-back stressed that, despite “the media up here slaughtering” the Czech Republic side, their team “was not rubbish by any stretch of the imagination”.

But O’Donnell admits that Steve Clarke’s side, who failed to qualify from their group, lost what was potentially the least difficult of the three games.

“I think we’d have maybe liked to have had that last, because we did learn things about our squad and just as a team playing in tournament football it’s different,” he said.

O’Donnell pointed out that even getting the simple things like how much table tennis to play during spare time and how much to rest was a learning experience.

“Everybody was learning and what gives us the chance to be more optimistic for this tournament is that the majority of that squad’s got that tournament experience, which none of us had,” he said.

“These are the things that when you’re speaking it gives you a wee bit more optimism for this tournament because you’ve got they all have that now.”

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