‘We’ve raised expectations’ – Clarke takes criticism as compliment

Steve Clarke says he and his Scotland squad “are just the same as everyone else” and “disappointed” with the way their Euro 2024 campaign panned out.

Scotland failed to win a game and didn’t make it out of the group stages in Germany despite a highly impressive qualifying campaign.

Head coach Clarke, speaking for the first time since the 1-0 defeat by Hungary consigned Scotland to the exit, said it “just wasn’t our tournament”.

After naming his squad for next month’s Nations League games against Poland and Portugal, he added: “We’re all disappointed we didn’t achieve what we wanted to achieve in the tournament.

“There’s always going to be criticism when you don’t achieve your targets. If all the criticism comes to me, that’s fine, I can take it.

“I think you have to look at the build-up to the tournament. It wasn’t smooth, we had a lot of players injured, even from in-camp we lost a lot of players and what we have shown is, if we’re missing one or two key players, we’re not as strong as we would be with them in the team.”

Given the strong qualifying campaign, which saw Scotland beat eventual tournament winners Spain at Hampden, hopes were high that Clarke’s side could progress from the group stage for the first time.

There has been criticism of the failure to do that, but Clarke said he takes that as a compliment.

“It means me and my staff and the players have done a really good job to raise expectations,” he added.

“When I took the job, it was over 20 years since we had been at a tournament, now we’ve been at two of the last three, so we must have done something right.

“If the expectation now is that you have to qualify for the tournament, and you have to come out the group stage, then that is what we’ll try and do in 2026.”