Leckie: Steve Clarke needs to get Scotland fans back on side after Euros debacle

STEVE CLARKE believes he’s earned the right for one last shot at World Cup glory.

It’s a belief I sincerely hope turns into a reality. But with one pretty huge proviso.

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That he does the business in the Nations League first.

If he can find a way to drag us back from the misery of that lousy Euros campaign and turn it on against the Poles, the Portuguese and the Croats, he’ll be back in the nation’s good books again.

Carry on where we left off against Hungary back in June, though? Let the Tartan Army down that badly again?

Sorry, Steve, but if that happens then I’m afraid the future has to be taken out of your hands.

If we fail as weedily as we did in Germany, the reaction of the fans will carry more heft than the length of your contract.

As a huge fan of our national coach, it hurts me to write this.

The work he’s done in rebuilding our confidence on the park and reuniting the team with its fans off it has been special.

Trouble is, so much of that great work was undone by the way we went out of the Euros — and even more so by the way he left millions of us hanging in the aftermath.

Five days ago, he finally put his head above the parapet more than two months after our timid capitulation to Hungary.

He claimed there would’ve been no point holding a public post-mortem back then because he’d only have had to say all the same things again now. Utter nonsense.

Having the conversation in June, a day or even a week after that monumental disappointment, would have cleared the air, drawn a line under the past.

Yes, it would also have left him open to some hefty criticism, but as he keeps telling us he doesn’t read or watch anything that’s said about him, what would that have mattered anyway?

That was his chance to do the right thing by the Tartan Army and by the country as a whole, but he blew it.

As did his SFA bosses by not growing a pair and telling him to do it.

Clear the air in June and we could have put what happened in Germany to bed so that, by the time he was naming his next squad at the end of August, it would all have been about the future.

We’d have got the hurt out of our system and everything would have been focused on six super-tough Nations League fixtures shoehorned into the next 74 days.

Sadly, though, one of Clarke’s greatest strengths as a man is also one of his few major weaknesses as a leader.

That bloody-mindedness. A determination that the more people want him to do something, the less chance there is of him doing it.

Doesn’t matter if it’s playing a back four against Hungary, giving James Forrest a kick of the ball sometime or offering an hour of his time to discuss an issue which is the talk of the Scottish steamie.

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If he doesn’t fancy it, he’ll blank it — which is fine when things are going well.

When we were beating Spain and Norway and carrying all before us, his Dalgishian grumpiness came across as endearing.

But when we’re down in the dumps, when the feelgood factor’s evaporating, when one of our key men has retired from international duty and when we’re desperate for leadership?

It just feels… well, as if he feels no obligation to say a damn thing about it to anyone.

For me, that’s been a huge mistake. And it’s one which was then compounded by the smart-a***d way he then handled those inevitable questions the other day about where he’s been these last couple of months.

All that stuff about not losing any sleep, but thanks for asking.

All those comments about how hindsight’s a wonderful thing, his regurgitation of how our tournament panned out without ever getting down to why it panned out that way. Sorry again, Steve, but it came across badly.

See, you made it all about you and that’s not the Steve Clarke who dragged this country out of the doldrums and back into the international big time, because that Steve Clarke never made it about himself.

I’m not saying he wasn’t hurting for those 65 days of radio silence following our humiliating elimination.

Of course he was — the job and the team and the country matters to him as much as it matters to anyone.

All I’m saying is had he put that hurt out there for all to see, had he shared his feelings with the nation, we might all have been feeling a whole lot better about ourselves this morning.

Would we still have been a bit uncertain, maybe even a bit fearful, going into this Nations League campaign?

Course we would, partly because we’re bruised from the summer and partly because this is a group most countries would struggle to cope with.

But at least we’d have moved on. We’d have vented.

Rather than wallowing in this mood we find ourselves in, one where the exhilaration of those amazing wins over Spain and Norway seems a long, long time in the past.

We need to get that feeling of exhilaration back, starting against Poland at Hampden on Thursday night.

We need to travel to face Ronaldo and his muckers in Lisbon on Sunday having seen the real Scotland stand up again.

If we do, if we’re able to put what happened in Germany out of our heads and come back stronger for it? If we’re able to grasp this place in the continent’s top division that we’ve worked so long and hard for?

No one will be happier than me. No one will cheer Steve Clarke louder.

No one will be more fervent in their desire to see him take us to the World Cup before he retires as a hero.

But he can’t just shrug and tell us he deserves that chance.

Like it or not, he has to earn it.

SOL BAMBA was as much a gentleman as he was a warrior.

Always smiling, always helpful, always with an unbreakable desire to win.

To battle back from cancer the way he did three years ago and get back out there winning tackles said everything about the guy’s inner strength.

Yet in the end, even that wasn’t enough to save him.

On Saturday, before his Turkish club Adanaspor’s match against Manisa, the 39-year-old took ill and passed away in hospital.

His wife Chloe spoke of Sol’s “unfair fight” with cancer, of his “astounding mental and physical strength” and how, despite it all, they still “managed to find joy and laughter” in their lives.

I’m pretty sure anyone who ever met Sol would nod along wistfully to those words, because that mixture of strength and joy was everything the big man was all about.

Sending love and good thoughts to Chloe and all who loved him.

AMAZING pictures from Capodichino Airport as Scott McTominay touched down for his new career adventure.

The boy must have felt 12 feet tall to see how many Napoli fans turned up to welcome him to one of Europe’s most incredible cities.

Though then again, even his new team-mate Billy Gilmour will be walking like a centre-half when he realises just how passionate those punters are.

There IS only Napoli in Naples. Nothing else matters.

I know this first-hand as someone whose in-laws live there and are fanatics.

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We were over on holiday when they won Serie A the season before last and the party went on for about a month.

Of course, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Which, in this case, means that when it DOESN’T go well, that Neapolitan passion can became a hugely negative force indeed.

Right now, though, McTominay and Gilmour will feel like film stars.

Here’s hope that feeling lasts until the credits roll.

IT’S 24 days since Hearts handed Steven Naismith and his coaching team contract extensions.

In that time, they’ve lost six on the spin in three competitions, shipping 11 goals, scoring just two.

There’s no shape to the team, no punch up front, no steel in defence. It’s like they’ve forgotten how to play football.

No wonder fans are heading for the exits earlier every week — and no wonder they’re asking questions about their board’s generosity to the gaffers.

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