BILLY Gilmour has revealed that Scotland have a gameplan they believe can enable them to beat Germany in the Euro 2024 opener in Munich tomorrow night - and stressed they will be going all out for victory.
Julian Nagelsmann’s side are strongly fancied to defeat Steve Clarke’s team comfortably in the tournament curtain raiser in the Allianz Arena and get their bid to win the European Championships for the fourth time off to a successful start.
However, Brighton midfielder Gilmour is confident that he and his countrymen will not be overawed by facing the likes of Kai Havertz, Toni Kroos and Manuel Neuer in front of a sell-out 70,000-strong and optimistic they can stun their revered rivals.
“We go into every game trying to win the game,” he said after another training session at the Scotland base in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria.
“For us, we have already tried and done stuff in training where we think we can break them down and go and win the game.
“Of course, Germany is going to be a difficult game, but we back ourselves. We have good players and we have been working hard all week on the training pitch to go and get a win.
“Everyone outside Scotland thinks it’s a Germany win. But we know ourselves that we are a good team and hard to beat when it comes to competitive games and we want to show that. We will go there and give it our best go. We have got a good enough team to do that.
“When you look around our squad, we have great players. Everyone doubts us and says ‘typical Scotland’ at times. We need to get out of that kind of routine. We need to go to games, win them comfortably, be confident and put on good performances. We will go out there v Germany and give it our all and hopefully try to win the game.”
Scotland’s form this season has left much to be desired – they were on a seven game winless run until they beat minnows Gibraltar in a warm-up friendly in Faro in Portugal last week.
But Gilmour, who made his competitive debut for the national team in their 0-0 draw with England at Wembley at Euro 2020 three years ago and picked up the Man of the Match award, knows that he and his team mates always raise their performance levels in meaningful matches.
He is adamant they can replicate the displays they produced in their qualifying wins over Cyprus, Spain, Georgia and Norway when their opening Group A game kicks off tomorrow night and record a result which stuns the football world and gives them a chance of reaching the last 16.
“I think you can always say friendlies are hard,” he said. “Maybe some people at the back of their mind are thinking about injuries with the Euros around the corner. So they don’t want to fly into tackles and be silly.
“But when it comes to competitive games I think our record has been very good. We beat Spain and Norway away, that was incredible, Kenny McLean’s goal and all that. I think we fight to the very last. We will take it game by game. But for us we know we want to come here and get out of the group, that is first and foremost.”
