There were two photos that emerged last week of international players reporting for duty ahead of the European Championships that rather encapsulated two very differing approaches to the tournament.
In one, you had the French superstars arriving at their Clairefontaine training base, with the likes of Barcelona defender Jules Kounde sporting a shirt, tie, designer flares and Cuban heels. In the other, you had James Forrest rocking up to Glasgow’s Blythswood Hotel with Kieran Tierney in shorts, T-shirt and trainers and with his belongings stuffed into a binbag.
Going into the Euros, the French clearly fancy themselves, in more ways than one. The Scots though will travel to Germany with a humility and a simple determination to give their lot for their country.
And in that photo, the two smiling Scotland players – unaffected by their status or the magnitude of what is to come in Germany – personified everything that has made Steve Clarke’s reign as Scotland manager such a successful one.
Forrest saw the funny side of the contrast between him, his old Celtic pal ‘KT’ and Kounde and co, but underneath it all was the rather more serious message that Scotland have their focus solely trained on what they are looking to achieve on the pitch.
“A few folk sent that to me and had said about the French boys all turning up in their designer gear,” Forrest laughed.
“It was just all my boots that were in there, it was easier to carry them in that.
“Then you see the photo of the French boys coming in next to me and KT’s, it’s quite a Scottish photo isn’t it?
“We’ve got no airs and graces, and I think me and KT are probably similar like that with our backgrounds.
“Nothing has really changed for us.”
And yet, recently, everything has changed for Forrest. A few months ago, the prospect of him starting for Scotland in one of their final warm-up games ahead of the Euros would have been a fanciful one, but he has regained his place both at Celtic and in Scotland manager Clarke’s thoughts.
It has been a fairytale end to the campaign for the winger, but as he and the other attacking players in the Scotland line-up toiled to find the breakthrough against Gibraltar on Monday evening, it rather called to mind an altogether less welcome memory of time when he was part of a team struggling against Gibraltarian opposition.
Celtic fans won’t thank anyone for mentioning that infamous evening against Lincoln Red Imps, and Forrest wasn’t exactly delighted to get the reminder either.
“That’s what happens sometimes,” he said.
“They hadn’t scored in 10 games and I don’t know the last time that they won.
“Everybody thinks that you are going to win five or six, but at club level or international level it’s not as easy as that.
“They’re still working hard, they are trying to make it difficult for us, and they managed to do that for long spells.
“I didn’t really think about that [Lincoln Red Imps game], but I know what you mean, because they haven’t scored for a while and we had so many shots on goal.
“The thing is, if we weren’t creating chances then we might have thought about that more, but we knew we had subs to come on and freshen it up, and we knew we were creating chances as well.
“We just thought we were always going to get that goal at some point. It would have been better to have got it earlier and we could maybe have kicked on, but we got there in the end.
“The positives are that a few boys haven’t played for a few weeks and they got some minutes in.
“It’s our first game and we will take that into Friday, which is our last game before the Euros, so everybody will be looking forward to that.”
Forrest also had some reassurance for any Tartan Army members who were a little concerned about the patchy performance in Faro.
In some ways, as strange a notion as it may be, the task of taking on Germany rather than the likes of Gibraltar may play to Scotland’s strengths, he feels, with their ability to soak up pressure and provide a threat on the counter.
“I think we do have a lot of players and a style that works well against those sorts of teams,” he said.
“There might be times as well when you need to chase a game, so it’s good now that we can switch it up.
“Germany will be a different game entirely to Gibraltar, and a different occasion as well.
“I’ve played loads of games at club level similar to the game in Faro, where teams will sit back and don’t get forward, but fair play to them, they are doing as much as they can to keep the score to 0-0.
“From Celtic, I know that if you score early that helps and you can go on and get four or five, and it would have been similar to that on Monday.
“Because we didn’t score early, it maybe took us a wee bit of time to really get going in the second half.
“But I think it will still give us confidence as we move towards the tournament.”
