Cadden has little time to dwell on cup defeat

Motherwell midfielder Chris Cadden will have to shrug off the devastation of a cup final defeat to focus on winning his first cap for Scotland.

The 21-year-old was handed a pre-final boost when he was called up to Alex McLeish’s squad for the end-of-season friendlies against Peru and Mexico.

The Scotland Under-21 player was, however, left crestfallen after the Hoops dashed Well’s hopes of winning the Scottish Cup for the first time since 1991.

Cadden has little time to dwell on his disappointment before reporting for international duty.

He said: “I heard of the call-up from (Scotland assistant coach) James McFadden. I know him from his time at Motherwell, he phoned me. It was brilliant.

“But I hadn’t even thought about it, I had just kept my focus on the final.

“It has been a long, tough season, I have played a lot of games so I will try and rest and try to get my head right before I meet up on Tuesday.”

Motherwell also lost 2-0 to Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic in the Betfred Cup final last November and they finished the season seventh in the Ladbrokes Premiership.

Cadden will take positives from the campaign and from the Steelmen’s never-say-die spirit, which came to the fore after the break.

He said: “It’s been a good season. Two cup finals is unbelievable, I’m just devastated we couldn’t go that wee step further.

“I thought we gave them too much respect in the first half but got in and about them in the second half, hit the bar, had our chances but didn’t take them.

“You have to keep going and that is one thing this group of boys does, we keep going until the 90th minute.

“We wanted to go and make history and give the fans a day to remember but we couldn’t do that so we are gutted.”