You'd think the Tartan Army would have learned by now. All those celebrations after claiming a spot among the second seeds for the Euro 2024 qualifying draw. And look who we pull out from the Pot Three we left behind. Only the best player on the planet right now. Sod’s Law should be renamed Jock’s Law.
Spain from the top group was fair enough, even if there were easier nations amongst that lot. Georgia will give the Tartan Army tremors and Cyprus are hardly mugs. But to run into Manchester City goal machine Erling Haaland and his Norway chums seems a cruel twist of fate after the heroics against Ukraine.
Steve Clarke insists he won’t have any Haaland heebie jeebies though – and in fact it’s the Scandinavian superman and the rest of our rivals who should maybe be just as worried about facing his side. Clarke said: “He’s obviously having a great time at Manchester City. Norway have dropped down to pot three after the recent round of Nations League games so it’ll be a tough game. Hopefully they’ll be thinking the same about playing Scotland.”
Clarke reckons his men will relish the chance to square up with the guy who looks like he’s been assembled in some kind of top secret striker biolab. Clarke shrugged and said: “That’s what we want. With the type of player we’ve got and the way we’re trying to play, the way we’re trying to improve as a team, is all about rising up to these challenges.”
It’s perhaps natural to focus on Haaland and Norway as they will be seen as the main threat for the second qualification spot, with not many betting against Spain topping the section. Clarke doesn’t see it that way and he reckons this is a fair sprint to the line for all of the sides.
He said: “That’s the next step for the lads. It’s a tough group but hopefully the other four teams are looking at Scotland thinking that’s a tough draw as well. It’s all about competing and trying to prove yourself against the best and we’ve certainly got some top players who are going to have to play very well against the top teams.
“It’s all speculation and thinking ahead. We’ll deal with the games when they come along.”
Clarke is also well aware Georgia is a graveyard of Scottish qualification dreams. Alex McLeish’s men stumbled there in 2007 after beating France a couple of times and then Gordon Strachan also came a cropper in the former Soviet outpost in 2015.
Clarke said: “Scotland has got some strange memories, some bad memories, from Georgia so it’s a chance to put that right.”
To add to the intrigue, Cyprus are managed by Georgia hero Temuri Ketsbaia, who was at Newcastle when Clarke was Ruud Gullit’s right hand man on Tyneside.
The Scotland boss said: "I worked with him but it was only briefly. I was working with Ruud at Newcastle. He was there. “He was a fiery character, a good lad, a really good person. He’s got a good track record as a manager. He had a spell in charge of his home country as well.”
Scotland fans might be slightly miffed the draw could have been easier. It could have been worse, mind you. Clarke is content and the qualification campaign won’t be quite as condensed as this year when we had the World Cup and Nations League all intertwined.
He said: “The schedule will be better for us next year as we were one of the ones to suffer from the backlog of fixtures, with the Ukraine situation and covid. No more three game windows, which is good. Two games are easier to manage. You get a little more time on the grass. We were certainly digging deep into our squad by the third game the last time but it was great that the players who we brought in managed to step up to get the result we needed. That’s a good thing moving forward.”
Clarke’s in a good place. Cyprus coming out of the hat takes him back to his first match as Scotland boss, when he needed Oil Burke’s last minute goal to seal a nerve-shredding victory. It’s a different story these days and Clarke has learned a lot too.
When asked what he knows now compared to back then, he said: “Just the nature of international football. You get very little time to prepare for matches in terms of time on the grass. You need to do more homework, more time in the office and in the lecture theatre. I’ve always tried to be consistent in terms of selection, getting players more caps and more experience, so they can handle this type of game. That’s what we need to do if we want to get first or second in the group and qualifying – which is what we are trying to do.”
Clarke knows the national team will be heading into cold storage for a while, with a bounce game with Turkey up in November then the long wait until March to get back to competitive action.
In the past the manager would be climbing the walls rather than the rankings. But Clarke said: “It’s a long time just watching matches. It’s part and parcel of the job and I’ve got more used to it. I can deal with the winter a little better than I used to!
“It was important we didn’t go from September to March without a game. It’ll give me a chance to see them and I’ll pick as strong a squad as possible. We want to have a good chat with the lads, have a bit of a debrief on what we did the other week. We’ve obviously got two systems now we can go between, so November will be a worthwhile exercise.”
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