With what almost feels like an indecent sense of haste, Scotland’s World Cup adventure is all but over. For the third time in succession, Steve Clarke and his players have stunk the place out in a major tournament.
It’s not quite a done deal yet. But, at some point over the next 48 hours or so, it is likely that Scotland’s elimination will be confirmed.
Trying to figure out all the permutations and arithmetic contortions will most likely lead to a headache, and the Tartan Army don’t need any more sore heads after an epic journey in Boston and Miami this past fortnight.
Clarke and the players spoke with an air of resignation after the 3-0 loss to Brazil on Wednesday night. In their heart of hearts, they knew their race was run.
Had they limited the damage to only a one or two-goal defeat, they could have limped on to the knockout stages.
But 3-0 changed the landscape dramatically. They were asking for trouble. In the stifling heat and humidity of Miami, Scotland’s goose was cooked.
Steve Clarke offers words of encouragement to Lewis Ferguson in the aftermath of Miami loss
It will now be death by 1,000 cuts over the next couple of days as the fans watch all the other games, praying for favours but resigned to the fate of an early exit being the most probable outcome.
How did it come to this? After so much talk from Clarke and the players about wanting to create history and reach the knockout stages for the first time, why did this feel like a re-run of Euro 2024?
In the immediate aftermath of the 1-0 win over Haiti in the opening game, this correspondent immediately sounded the alarm bell.
That was always going to be a result which could come back to haunt us. And so it proved. Brazil beat Haiti by three goals, Morocco beat them by two, Scotland only beat them by one.
Had we won by another goal or two against the Caribbean minnows, we would almost certainly be looking forward to a place in the last 32. For Zaire in 1974, see Haiti in 2026.
Yet, the true failure of this campaign runs deeper than that. There were still two more games to play. Two more opportunities to get a result and put the matter beyond doubt. But Clarke’s cautious approach and lack of ambition defined everything, as was the case in the Euros in Germany two years ago.
He can rail against this all he wants and offer up whatever explanation he chooses. When he spoke the media earlier this week, he was clearly irked by the suggestions of a negative approach in the Morocco game.
Questions are now being asked over whether Clarke can take Scotland any further
Plainly, it didn’t wash. Nobody was asking Clarke to go ‘gung-ho’, as he claimed. What we wanted — and needed — was the manager to find a balance between defensive stability whilst carrying a threat in attack.
On that count, Clarke failed spectacularly. Just as he failed spectacularly against Hungary two years ago in Stuttgart.
From the moment Clarke’s team-sheet landed prior to kick-off against Morocco, the writing was on the wall for Scotland. It was over.
Kieran Tierney was deployed on the left side of midfield and Ben Gannon-Doak was dropped from the team altogether.
Why play Tierney in such an unfamiliar role in a match of such significance? It was a fundamentally negative move — and it didn’t work. That’s on the manager, no one else.
This World Cup campaign will be defined by a lack of ambition, defensive mistakes, an objective to scrape through by damage limitation; a game plan built not on imagination, but on survival.
The Tartan Army have been the life and soul of the World Cup party over the past two weeks, but Scotland as a team have offered absolutely nothing to the tournament.
The responsibility for this falls at Clarke’s door. Granted, some of his big players have not delivered. Andy Robertson, John McGinn and Scott McTominay have all had poor tournaments.
Scotland’s big players once again failed to turn up when it mattered most
McTominay, in particular, has been dreadful. Standing in the mixed zone on Wednesday night, he walked straight past without so much as a glance in our direction as journalists asked him to stop for an interview.
After a couple of good seasons in Italy with Napoli, McTominay has a jumped-up opinion of himself. Rarely does he ever do a proper media session with Scotland.
But it’s the manager who has to carry the can for all of this. Once again, as he did after the Morocco game, Clarke stormed off a post-match interview with the broadcast media.
It was a terrible look. Again. Like much of Clarke’s dealings with the media, he has been deeply unimpressive throughout this tournament.
He also went out of his way to remind people that it was the players who delivered this World Cup adventure for the supporters.
At this point, it’s just noise. He said much the same when we were knocked out of Euro 2024, before then going to ground and disappearing for months without offering a proper explanation after the Hungary defeat.
Only a few weeks ago, when it was announced that Clarke had been given a new four-year deal, SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell said that it had been an ‘easy decision’.
Why was it easy? We had failed in both previous tournaments under Clarke. Why not wait and see how this one panned out?
Perhaps it was easy in the sense that the SFA had no viable alternatives and no obvious succession plan.
By handing Clarke a new deal, they set the precedent that qualification for tournaments should be the grand sum of our ambitions. That nothing else matters after that.
To hand the manager a bumper new deal on the eve of a World Cup always looked like a risky move. The smarter play would have been to wait and make an assessment based on performances in the tournament.
Matheus Cunha sweeps home Brazil’s third goal to round off a dispiriting night for Scotland
If it looked like a silly move at the time, it looks a whole lot sillier now. Frankly, the decision to hand Clarke that new contract has aged like milk.
Being inside the stadium on Wednesday night, feeling the sense of utter deflation among fans and players, it felt like a natural break point.
A natural juncture at which to shake Clarke’s hand, thank him for his service and for taking Scotland back to three major tournaments, before parting company.
Instead, we are locked into this nightmare for another four years. Spare us the nonsense about how it’s been so wonderful to be back on the big stage. Honestly, who can say they have enjoyed watching Scotland across their three matches in this World Cup? We have been absolutely brutal.
As a nation, we should be trying to rid of ourselves of that mentality where qualification is viewed as success in and of itself. Once again, Scotland have been also-rans, making up the numbers.
Clarke probably thought more club job offers would be on the table when he said at the outset of the qualification campaign that it would most likely be his last.
When very few offers were forthcoming, that’s when he started to change his tune and let it be known that he wasn’t against the idea of staying on.
SFA president Mike Mulraney chats with FIFA counterpart Gianni Infantino in Miami
SFA president Mike Mulraney spoke before the tournament, claiming Clarke had been ‘his man’ from the outset and that he needed ‘no vindication’ of the decision to appoint Clarke or issue him with contract extensions.
In a defiant show of support for the Scotland boss, Mulraney said: ‘I knew I was right the day I appointed him, I knew he was right the day he qualified us for a major tournament. I know I’m right on the days it goes wrong, and I believe I’m still right as I sit here today.’
Ultimately, Maxwell, Mulraney and the SFA are in thrall to Clarke. There is no pressure on the manager to actually achieve anything in major tournaments.
Clarke looks and sounds like a man who is fed up with it all. Like he is almost doing Scotland a favour by hanging around for another four years.
The SFA obviously value his ability to qualify for major tournaments, but don’t wish to rock the boat and find out whether another manager might be capable of getting more from this group of players.
That’s ultimately what it comes down to. It’s a culture of complacency, of cosiness, a culture of simply being happy to make up the numbers.
The SFA divorced Clarke from all accountability coming into this World Cup. They made him bulletproof at a time when his performance should be under the greatest scrutiny.
When you strip it back, this is now nothing more than a marriage of convenience between Clarke and the SFA. They’ve decided to stay together for the sake of the kids. As we all know, it never works.
What unfolded against Brazil in Miami on Wednesday night felt like the end of the road. A natural point to reach for the divorce papers. Instead, the vows had already been renewed.
