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Former Scotland boss Steve Clarke has remarkably revealed how the SFA ‘panicked’ after he pushed them into offering him a new Scotland contract before this summer’s disastrous World Cup campaign.
Clarke was handed a four-year extension on the eve of the tournament and, speaking for the first time since stepping down in the wake of Scotland’s group stage exit, he explained that he felt his Hampden bosses were hedging their bets, so he opted to give them ‘a little shove’.
The 63-year-old insists it was always his plan to resign if his side failed to negotiate a group featuring Haiti, Morocco and Brazil, but he wanted to ‘control his own narrative’.
In an interview with former Chelsea and Scotland team-mate Pat Nevin at Spartans Community Foundation dinner in Edinburgh, Clarke also appeared to put the boot into his former employers by insisting contract negotiations were like ‘drawing teeth’.
When on his decision to step down so soon after agreeing the new deal, Clarke said: ‘It was never really a change of mind. I am quite a complex person. I wanted to control my narrative.
‘Obviously we got to March and I hadn’t been offered a new contract, which I thought was pretty strange. You start to think are they hedging their bets a little bit, waiting on the tournament in the summer.
‘So I did a little bit in the media in March to give the SFA a little shove. We negotiated non-stop from the beginning of April really to the middle of May, just before the Curacao game.
‘And I said to them if we don’t agree a new contract before we go to the World Cup then I will say I am leaving the job. They panicked a little bit and gave me the new contract.
‘It was like drawing teeth trying to get it over the line. But we got it over the line anyway.
‘I always knew in my head that if we did not get out of the group stage then I would probably leave. The only way I would have stayed on is if they had been three fantastic games and they went against you.’
Scotland opened their World Cup campaign in North America with a 1-0 win over Haiti but lost by the same score to Morocco before a demoralising 3-0 defeat to Brazil left them in football purgatory, awaiting an unlikely series of results to allow them to progress as one of the better third-place sides.
‘We had to stay for four or five days [in Charlotte], the longest four or five days ever just sitting and waiting, knowing you are going home because the goal difference was not good enough,’ recalled Clarke.
‘I knew we needed four points. I got hammered in the media for saying that. Somebody hammered me for saying, “Nah, that’s us, we are going home”. But I was right.’
Clarke admitted that after speaking to several senior players in the immediate aftermath of the Brazil defeat, he realised that they needed to hear a different voice if they were to finally make progress and get beyond the group stage at a major tournament.
He also revealed that he spoke to new head coach Sebastien Pocognoli to wish him well and believes ‘even Scotland’ cannot fail to qualify for Euro 2028 in light of the fact that two spots in the finals will be reserved for the best-ranked host who have not qualified as a group winner or runner-up.
