The agony, the ignominy and the long road home. The team that said they were in Germany to make history retreated on Monday with a notoriety of an altogether different kind.
Scotland’s performance was, indeed, the stuff of legend, in one sense. Their statistics belong in a hall of shame, or one of those odditoriums with magic mirrors and optical illusions.
Generations would stare in wonder at the numbers Scotland delivered here and question how on earth they could be so poor. Two goals (neither of them finished by a Scottish player) was bad enough, but three shots on target in three games is a lamentable figure.
Seven individual players from other nations have had more shots on target than all of Scotland’s players put together – and six of that seven have only played two games. Fifteen other players have already equalled Scotland’s overall total.
They rank bottom in the shots on target table, bottom on the expected goals table (an inept 0.97), currently second from bottom on the xG conceded table (4.3) and joint bottom on the attempts on goal table. They will end up bottom of that list, too.
It’s only in the saves and clearances and tackles categories where Scotland are top end. High marks for heart, no marks in many other senses.
Out with a whimper, not a bang
Scotland came to the Euros and did not fire a shot, almost literally. Save for the spirit showed against Switzerland, the whole thing was a damp squib. They went out with a whimper.
There are myriad reasons for all of this, some major, some minor, some speculative. The truth is the demise of this team, from a point of five straight wins during March to September last year and the concession of just one goal – which happened to be an Erling Haaland penalty – has been steady and alarming.
It started long before they ever set foot in Germany. They came here on the back of one win in nine games – a dreary victory over Gibraltar.
Their defence became shaky, their goals dried up. Scott McTominay scored seven times from eight attempts on target in qualification, a freakish return that could not be sustained. Nobody else stepped up.
Che Adams works hard but struggled to make an impact, though in fairness he was not blessed with service. Scotland’s forwards plough a joyless furrow.
Steve Clarke’s go-to men became diminished. Was that tiredness? Was it the enormity of the occasion getting to them?
They talked from the very outset about being the team that finally got through a group stage at a major championship and then could not back up their talk with action. In two of the three games they carried virtually no threat.
Did they out-psyche themselves? You would need a team of boffins to figure out the complex psychology of each player, but they were not themselves – nowhere near.
John McGinn has not looked anything like the McGinn immortalised in song. Among Scotland’s main men, he was far from alone in seeing the tournament pass him by.
Injuries hit in giant and destructive waves and Scotland limped into the Euros.
Clarke tried to explain away the run of losses on the road to Germany as friendlies against the elite (no shame in losing against Europe’s heavy hitters), dead rubber group games and glorified training sessions. It will be all right on the night, he said.
It was not and anybody watching the deterioration of this team with dispassionate eyes (not easy given the incredible emotion involved) might have predicted it.
Clarke railed against the Argentine referee who refused to give Scotland a penalty they probably deserved on Sunday night – but his comments were crass, to put it mildly. Heat of the moment stuff, for sure, but those words he used were like much of what Scotland did in Germany – misguided.
What was more pertinent was the complete absence of aggression and intensity in most of Scotland’s performance. What backfired was Clarke’s own rigid belief that picking the same players in the same positions was going to produce a different outcome to the ones seen for nine or 10 months now.
It’s a Clarke mantra that he believes in his players – or a core group of players, though plenty did not see any game time. He, possibly, believes too much.
He was not blessed with options, but he had James Forrest and Lawrence Shankland playing no–part and a bit-part, he had substitutions he could have made to shake things up and he either did not make them or made them too late in the day.
His team was passive, flat, unthreatening. They went out meekly and there’s now an understandable focus on Clarke and his team selection, team formation and in-game problem solving. ‘In Clarke We Trust’ is a phrase that did the rounds a while back, but no longer.
He’s been magnificent in guiding Scotland to back-to-back championships and has the unwavering support of everybody at the Scottish FA.
If he wants to carry on then he will. However, he has to find ways of making this team play with more fire and ambition.
Had Scotland gone out in a blaze of action and ambition then the fans would have taken it on the chin. There was none of that.
Where’s the progress?
The re-introduction of Kieran Tierney and Aaron Hickey will make a difference. Lewis Ferguson’s time is surely coming, just as soon as he has recovered from the injury that ended what was a brilliant Serie A campaign with Bologna.
Scotland need the width and pace of Ben Doak. They need to see if Tommy Conway has it. If Clarke is to stay then he needs to adapt – and now.
He has Poland, Portugal and Croatia as Nations League rivals. The fatalists would say Scotland will be one win in 18 when those games conclude.
Pessimistic, no doubt, but that’s not an outlandish forecast. There are tough days ahead for Clarke.
Fans will be less forgiving after this Euros failure compared to the last. One point then and one point now. Where’s the progress? What lessons are being learned?
Some will be convinced his time should be up, that he has taken this team as far as he can.
Scotland finished where their world ranking suggested they would but it was the manner of it that was the problem, the non-performance in two games out of three, the lack of goal threat and the sight of a brilliant opportunity passing them by.
We probably will not hear from Clarke for a little while but it will be interesting to listen to him when he resurfaces.
Has he got the ideas and the energy to drive on through the doubt that now faces him? What does he think went wrong and how does he intend to put it right?
Surely the penny has dropped now that more of the same is not good enough.