Scotland have ‘real belief’ of Euro 2024 progress – Ryan Porteous

Ryan Porteous says the current Scotland team have “real belief” they can become the first to progress from a group at a major tournament.

Scotland face Gibraltar in Portugal in Monday’s penultimate Euro 2024 warm-up match before hosting Finland on Friday.

Steve Clarke’s side open the tournament against hosts Germany on 14 June.

Though the Scots have reached successive European Championship finals, four overall, and eight World Cups, they have never made it past the first round.

“We’ve got a big, big job to do,” said Watford defender Porteous, 25.

“We’re a squad that, over the last four, five years, we’ve been setting these mini-records for ourselves. We’ve done quite a lot but no Scotland team’s ever got out the group so it’s definitely something that everybody wants within that changing room.

“We’ve got quality littered throughout the squad, you see the depth. We’ve always say that our squad’s our strength and I think we’ve showed that in that last campaign

“There’s a real belief but there’s also a real hunger to try and make that next step.”

Against Gibraltar, Scotland are seeking to end a run of seven games without a win, which includes the final three games of their Euros qualification campaign.

“The record’s not been great in friendlies so that’s something that we want to change right away and Monday’s the first chance to do that so we won’t be taking any of these games lightly,” added Porteous.

“The two games are really important to us.”