"I'd be a bit daft if I wasn't proud because I'm the first guy to reach that amount of games, he said. It's nice, but that's a little personal thing at the moment. It shouldn't be about me. It's about the team and it's about trying to get to the World Cup so that's what we're going to focus on."
"The brief was to qualify for tournaments. We've managed to do that twice, but we want to do it again because we're all greedy. The expectation was to do as well as I could. I've always looked at the players and you're thinking: What can we do to improve?' Did I think it'd last this long? Probably not, but here I am."
"If you want to qualify, these are the games you have to win,. You have to give yourself a platform to play against the bigger nations. If you drop points to the teams ranked below you, it makes qualification very difficult. If you look at our barren years, maybe we messed up against opposition we felt we should have been beating."
Steve Clarke will manage his 72nd Scotland game, making him the nation's longest-serving manager by matches. Clarke prioritizes World Cup qualification and downplays the personal milestone, insisting the focus must remain on the team. His tenure has delivered two tournament qualifications and he wants another. Scotland's win over Greece leaves them level with Denmark on points but behind on goal difference in Group C, with remaining matches in Athens and at home to Denmark. Clarke warns against complacency, stressing the need to beat lower-ranked teams like Belarus, who will be organised and hard to break down.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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