Reality bites hard for Steve Clarke’s Scotland

This won’t be a popular opinion, but Scotland finished exactly where they should have in group A: bottom.

Let’s remind ourselves of the teams’ respective world rankings: Germany, 16th; Switzerland, 19th; Hungary, 27th; Scotland, 39th.

Wonder of wonders: that’s exactly the order they finished in the group, with Scotland living up to their seeding: 4th.

To have done any better, Steve Clarke needed to get his team to do what it did in qualifying and over-perform. The form that brought the big wins over Spain and Norway was nowhere to be seen here.

Indeed, not only did Scotland fail to exceed their normal levels, they actually did the opposite and under-performed.

Three shots on target in the entire tournament? 17 shots of any description across all three matches? It simply doesn’t cut it at this level.