Scotland stay ‘alive’ but lose Tierney for decider

COLOGNE, Germany — Scotland manager Steve Clarke said his team are still “alive” in the European Championships after their 1-1 draw with Switzerland, but admitted Kieran Tierney will miss their key Group A clash with Hungary with a hamstring injury.

Scotland headed into Wednesday’s match in Cologne against Switzerland knowing they needed at least a point to maintain their hopes of making the knockout stages of Euro 2024. They suffered a heavy 5-1 defeat in their opener to Germany, but bounced back with a far better showing against Switzerland.

Scott McTominay scored a deflected effort after 13 minutes to give Scotland the lead, only for Xherdan Shaqiri to equalise 13 minutes later with a wonderful effort. Both teams had chances to win the match, with Grant Hanley hitting the post in the second half and Switzerland having two efforts ruled out for offside. But Clarke was pleased with the spirit his team showed.

“Yes, that’s what we expected,” Clarke said. “This is the way we’ve been playing as a team over the past three or four years. We knew what we had to do, it was a good team performance against a good opponent. [It was a] good reaction to a disappointing night and we’re still alive in the tournament.”

Clarke added that it wasn’t necessarily about restoring pride, but more about re-finding what makes them a tough team to play against.

“It was about doing better all the time, sometimes it doesn’t go your way,” Clarke said. “Tonight was about getting back to what you’re good at — working hard.”

But Scotland will be without Tierney for their match against Hungary on Sunday in Stuttgart. The Arsenal defender injured his hamstring in the second half and was stretchered off. When asked how Tierney was, Clarke answered: “Injured, won’t play the next game for sure.”

Clarke was impressed by the performance of Billy Gilmour in midfield, and also praised Angus Gunn‘s showing in goal, as he kept Switzerland at bay.

The Scotland manager was aware of the pressure Scotland were under heading into the game, but said it was a scenario he’d planned for when the draw was made.

“The reality is when the draw was made against the host nation in the first game, you’re looking at the second two in the group and thinking maybe that’s where the points are going to come from.

“That’s the way it turned out. So everybody was trying to overhype the fact that we had to get something from the game tonight, but the reality was even if we had played well against Germany, we probably would’ve been the similar position.

“We had to come to the game to get something to keep going and that’s what we did.”

Switzerland now have four points from their first two matches and Murat Yakin was pleased with their performance.

“We still have one game to go — it’s still very open and we’ll do everything in our power to qualify in the third match,” Yakin said. “In these first two matches, we’ve shown we’re ready to battle.

“It wasn’t a formality we’d dominate Hungary in the first half. We’d studied the Scots closely and we hadn’t yet done the job, but we’ve taken a big step forward this evening and a worthy step forward to the knockout phase.”