GORDON TALKS peculiar practice
Strachan is able to focus on rising stars and play-off hopes instead of his future
THE recent progress of Scotland’s national team can be gauged in different ways. The emergence of Stuart Armstrong, Andrew Robertson and Kieran Tierney as international players. The possibility of a World Cup play-off with two games to go. The fact no one speaks about the future of the manager anymore. Gordon Strachan is uncomfortable with questions over his job security. Uncomfortable speaking about himself.
Scotland’s back-to-back wins over Lithuania and Malta marked the first triumph in a qualifying double header since 2007. For the manager, the excitement of winning games and talking up good players beats the awkwardness of talking about his own job hands down.
‘You have to remember that the worst thing in football is talking about yourself,’ explains Strachan. ‘I can spend all night here talking about anyone else, but not me.
‘I find it difficult and I don’t want to go into what my thoughts are. It’s personal, my thought process. It shouldn’t go to everyone who wants to listen to it. I really have to keep my thoughts to myself.’
International management is a fickle business.
Scotland play their two games remaining in Group F next month. Beat Slovakia at Hampden and Slovenia away three days later and a World Cup play-off against Italy, Portugal, Sweden or Northern Ireland becomes likely. Fail to secure second place and the clamour for change — for David Moyes — will gather momentum.
Strachan — and Scotland — continue to pay the price for costly mistakes. The campaign is full of ‘if onlys’.
A 1-1 draw with Lithuania at home remains a source of anguish. The same can be said of Harry Kane’s stoppage-time equaliser for England in June.
Had Scotland claimed all three points in either game, a home win against Slovakia next month would almost certainly have been enough to secure second place.
As things stand, beating Jan Kozak’s side and Slovenia away is not impossible. It is, however, a harder qualification scenario than it might have been.
The team selection against Lithuania was a baffling business. After four games, the Scots had just four points in the locker and Strachan considered leaving of his own accord. A 3-0 defeat to England at Wembley would have marked the end for most Scotland managers. Yet Strachan saw enough in a much-changed team to suggest there was life in the campaign yet and convinced the SFA board to grant him a reprieve.
‘There were a couple of things,’ he says now. ‘I like working with the players and I like my job.
‘I also think: “Right, where do we go? What’s coming up? Who is progressing?”
‘I count the England game as a good performance. I just think it was a freak three headers that they won. I’ve not seen England doing that since. Three free headers and them going in.’
The operation against England was a success, but the patient still died. Some on the SFA board shared the public view that a change of manager might be for the best.
‘I can understand that,’ says Strachan of that period now. ‘I’ve no problem with people questioning things — as long as it’s in the right manner and not personal, that’s fine.’
He can resist the temptation now to wave two fingers at those of us who thought his time was up. That would involve speaking about himself again.
‘It’s pleasing when you are looking at guys in the dressing room after and everyone is clapping and looking forward to the next game with each other,’ is all he will say.
‘And there are other things coming through at the minute that make us all excited. The young players give us real hope. But, again, it’s in certain areas.’
That Robertson and Tierney have emerged as two of the best young left-backs in British football at the same time is remarkable at a time when the national team doesn’t have a centre-half or natural right-back worth the title.
Yet, there’s no secret to why Scotland have improved. Robertson, Tierney, Armstrong, Leigh Griffiths and Matt Phillips are better than the players they replaced.
Against better teams, Scotland’s defensive frailties could still be badly exposed. The hope is that the dam will hold for two more games, starting with Slovakia’s visit next month.
Strachan describes the 3-0 reverse in Trnava as ‘a strange game’, adding: ‘Their first hit at goal goes in the back of the net.
‘Once you walk away from games, if there is nothing there, if there is no hope, that’s the time you go: “Wow, that’s it”.’
At the behest of his family, he almost walked after Slovakia. Another 3-0 loss in London did little to hint at immediate improvement, but Strachan could sniff something in the air.
‘I would never have said this was impossible, but it was going to be hard,’ he continues. ‘But they have shown they can deal with hard — that they can deal with pressure.
‘It’s hard when you are losing games. That’s the time when you are tested as a player or manager.’
It’s too early for the Tartan Army to be booking tours of Lenin’s Tomb just yet.
Midfielders Stanislav Lobotka and Marek Hamsik ran the show for Slovakia at Wembley this week before falling to a 2-1 defeat.
Hampden next month will be fraught, tense and awkward. The old place had one of its greatest World Cup nights against the former Czechoslovakia in 1973 and more than the opposition borders have changed since then.
‘You’re going back a bit with Czechoslovakia or Spain,’ says Strachan. ‘They were big nights. It was like a play-off in those days.
‘There were only three teams in the group. You both played Denmark and battered them and then it was really just a play-off.
‘It was nothing like it is now. The grind and grind that goes on, to ask players to play ten games.’
Scotland, then, have a long way to go. But the road to Moscow feels less tiring now.