In his 1881 essay Virginibus Puerisque Robert Louis Stevenson coined the saying which could have been written to describe Scotland’s national football team at major tournaments.
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” said Stevenson in a nod to the fact that the excitement and the anticipation of the journey can often be more fulfilling than the destination itself.
Steve Clarke can vouch for that better than most. Seven years in charge of Scotland’s national team have brought three qualifications for major tournaments and, while the path to the finals was a thrilling joy ride, a rollercoaster of emotions, the final stop was brief, unfulfilling and decidedly flat.
“I didn’t enjoy the last two tournaments,” said the Ayrshireman as he perched on a stage in the Boston Stadium on the eve of his side’s opening Group C game against Haiti. “The first one was covid affected and didn’t feel (right).
“Even going to Wembley we put in a really good performance and got a 0-0 draw, but the stadium had not many people and it didn’t feel like a major tournament.
“The Germany one was disappointing because of the way we started the tournament, more than the other two games if I am being honest. We let ourselves down and then you have that bad feeling hanging over you all tournament.
“This is my third tournament and hopefully we have learned from experience. It’s also 28 years since Scotland have been at a major tournament and anybody you speak to supporter wise will tell you that they are grateful that the team has brought them out here and I am the same. I am grateful that my team has brought me here.”
While Clarke and his players were taking a two hour flight from Charlotte to Boston to complete final preparations for Scotland’s first game at the World Cup finals for 28 years, supporters were embarking on a longer journey.
Pipers, drummers and highland dancers escorted 100 members of the Tartan Army to their departure gate at Edinburgh Airport, with First Minister John Swinney – no friend of football fans in normal times – joining an anticipated exodus of up to 50,000 supporters.
Most of them were there for the delayed Euros of 2020 when the Hampden roar was reduced to a breathless rasp by covid, a restricted 12000 crowd and face masks. As Clarke says, the experience – like the performances and the results – was deeply underwhelming. After 23 years of pining for a crack at a major tournament the opening game ended in defeat to Czechia at a socially distanced Hampden.
The experience was broadly the same two years ago, when qualification for Euro 2024 offered an intoxicating taste of some strong German lager and a tournament experience in a traditional football setting. Once again, reality sobered them up and the hangover was brutal.
The first game in Munich finished with a bruising, chastening 5-1 thrashing to the host nation. Asked what he had learned from his experiences of playing in tournament curtain raisers Clarke provided a very Scottish assessment.
“The Germany one is easy. Don’t get humped…
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“The Czech Republic game is a little bit different. Everyone goes on the scoreline in that game when we lost 2-0, but if you actually watch the game and watch where we were in the game when Patrick Schick decided to shoot from the halfway line then we were actually on top of the game and looked like we might get an equaliser.
“So that was a football game that just didn’t go our way. The Germany one was disappointing because we didn’t get anywhere near the level we can get to and as a host nation they played a great game.”
It was never a simple question of one bad game in Germany. Scotland attempted the lowest number of shots (17) of any team in the tournament, just three of them hitting the target. Over three fixtures they scored just two goals – one an own goal – and averaged an expected goals tally of 0.44 per match. The performance against Hungary in the final game was so bereft of imagination, ambition and attacking intent that a straw poll of fans might have voted to dismiss the manager that night.
When it comes to reaching major tournaments Clarke is the best Scotland manager of all time and his reward for that is a new four year contract from the Scottish FA. When it comes to performing on the big stage he remains as unfulfilled as Willie Ormond, Ally MacLeod, Jock Stein, Alex Ferguson, Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown before him.
If this World Cup fails to excite people, if he refuses to release the handbrake and give supporters something to smile about, then questions over the timing of the new contract will only grow in noise and volume. The timing of the decision – not to mention the decision itself – will be queried.
In one sense that’s unfair. In Germany, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Italy and France one Scotland manager after another came, saw and failed. Progress to the knock-out stages was too much to ask and weeks of excitement, build up, hype and hubris ended in an early flight home.
Scotland managers have always been better at reaching tournaments than they were at staying there for any length of time. When Louis Stevenson penned ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ about a London doctor and his alter ego he could have been describing the schizophrenic contrast between Scotland in qualification groups and Scotland in a tournament setting.
“We know that the last two tournaments have not gone the way that we wanted the tournaments to go. We have another chance and that’s credit to the players that they keep qualifying for these major tournaments. It’s great to be here but we also want to do something special.”
Arriving in a blistering Boston, the excitement was tangible. Scotland shirts were dotted along the Uber line at Logan Airport. Kit manufacturers Adidas pulled out the stops to release a brilliant Trainspotting themed Scott McTominay video on social media. When Gordon Ramsay pitched up at the morning training session everyone developed their own theories on the source of the Napoli midfielder’s worrying stomach upset. Training yesterday, McTominay is now fine. Even Billy Gilmour, victim of a cruel pre-tournament injury, had the smile back on his face.
A social media abstainer Clarke is fed snippets of the growing excitement back home by younger members of the SFA staff, admitting: “They show me little clips of videos back home and you get a little feel of the mood. It’s fantastic because everyone seems to excited about the tournament and let’s hope that we don’t let them down.”
The manager’s wife, three children, two daughter in laws and five grandchildren have all flown to Boston to soak up a proud moment in the old boy’s career.
“Not many people get the chance to take their country to a World Cup. I want to try and enjoy it, but the game will dictate that more than the circumstances. It’s my third tournament and I feel more attuned to what the tournament is, even if it has just taken 20 minutes to get through security.
“That’s a little bit different but it is going to be a really proud moment.”
For the manager, for the players, for the nation as a whole, a return to football’s top table feels good. And yet, as history persistently shows with any Scotland team, it’s often better to travel than it is to arrive. Let this be the World Cup when the destination is half as exciting as the journey.
