Steve Clarke has witnessed an “extra edge” in Scotland training this week as players compete to be chosen for the Euro 2024 finals in Germany. The manager’s team preparation for the tournament opener with the hosts in June starts with Friday’s friendly against the Netherlands at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam.
Clarke, whose defenders Grant Hanley and Scott McKenna were late withdrawals with injury concerns, pointed to the competitiveness of his squad, with only 23 places available for the Euros.
“The training has been really intense to be fair to the players,” he said. “They want to do well every time they come away to represent their country. This group is always competitive – I’ve always spoken highly of them. Obviously there’s a little bit of an extra edge because we are approaching a major tournament and they all want to be involved in it. We have built camaraderie in the last four and a half years [his tenure] and they’re all still trying to build the standard.”
Scotland qualified in second place with 17 points, four behind Spain, losing only once. Their 2-0 victory over Spain last March was the standout result but they have failed to win any of their past five games, drawing the final two qualifiers, with Norway and Georgia, losing 2-0 to Spain in the return, and being defeated 4-1 by France and 3-1 by England in friendlies. Clarke was asked for a word to characterise this sequence of form.
“Informative,” he said. “The two results that I don’t like the most are the two draws in the competitive games. If we want to continue to improve and get to where we want to be then those are matches we should win, so that’s something we can improve on. We want a positive result this week.”
Clarke was asked whether he agreed with the assertion of the centre-back Ryan Porteous that Scotland are “not far” off heavyweights France and England. “We know we’re not at that level but we were competitive in both those games,” he said. “The circumstances around the games were a little bit different. We had just beaten Cyprus away [3-0 in a Euro qualifier] and England came to Hampden and were very good on the night. We didn’t reach the standards that we wanted to reach and we lost that one.
“France was a different one again as we had just qualified, having watched Spain beat Norway. We had a good night to be honest, we enjoyed ourselves. Then we went to play one of the best teams in the world and if you actually watch the game against France we had some good moments. We showed we could be competitive against these teams. That’s what we want to show tomorrow night against a very good Dutch side and obviously we want a positive result as well.”
The Netherlands are coached by Ronald Koeman, who is in his second tenure, having guided the nation to Euro 2020 before departing in advance of the finals to take charge of Barcelona. Clarke was asked for his assessment of the Oranje, who are captained by Virgil van Dijk and include Nathan Aké and Memphis Depay, the latter returning after a year’s absence due to injuries.
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“They are at a similar level to Spain, always good players, always competitive – we expect a tough game,” he said.
Clarke said there were no long-term concerns regarding Hanley and McKenna. “We knew there was a chance Grant wouldn’t come and Scott travelled but thought his problem would clear in 48 hours but it didn’t.”