John McGinn believes Scotland can surge fearlessly towards Euro 2024 having developed a touch of on-pitch arrogance.
Steve Clarke and his team are preparing for Saturday’s vital Group A crunch against Norway in Oslo. Scotland sit proudly at the top of the section after two games with a 100 per cent record following opening wins over Cyprus and Spain. Now positive results against the Norwegians and Georgia at Hampden a week tonight will put Clarke’s boys in an excellent position at the section’s halfway stage.
Off the park, McGinn and his team-mates remain grounded, humble and hard-working. However, the Aston Villa midfielder feels Scotland are also building a strong inner belief in crunch games as he assesses the current position in the race for next summer’s finals in Germany.
McGinn said: “We’ve developed a wee bit of arrogance on the park, something we didn’t have before. Instead of being fearful of people and teams, whether individually or as a group, we now come together with full belief we can get results.
“The position we’re in is a very good one but we know with how little games there are in this group, only one result could change that. Two wins will be extremely difficult, we know that. But the two games we had to start were tough and we managed to come through them strongly.”
Asked to expand on his confidence theory, the 28-year-old added: “There might have been a bit of a fear factor before. We may have been defeated even before going into that game. But with the experience everyone in our squad has now, that’s not the case. We have boys up the road playing European football, in big games, against top players.
“We also have boys in England playing against household names week in and week out, so that fear factor naturally goes. You realise you have to compete against them and as much as you have respect for them, you have to treat them like any other player.
“I’ve said that’s an arrogance and I don’t want us to come across as an arrogant group. But there’s certainly more confidence and belief, which you can see in the performances.
“We were all expecting an easier draw. I know I was excited about being in pot two, watched the draw and thought, ‘That’s typical of our luck’. But you let that settle in, you think, ‘Right that’s a challenge for us and one we need to take on with confidence’.”
