Confident Clarke won’t fall for Willi’s wind-ups
ALONGSIDE an intimate knowledge of each other’s playing squads, Steve Clarke and Willi Ruttensteiner share a love of fishing. For the Scotland boss, a visit to the banks of a loch or river are essential to the decompression process between assignments.
Willi by name and wily by nature, the Israel coach’s love of an angler’s rod is more metaphorical.
Clarke’s prickliness in the face of criticism of his team’s defeat in Denmark last month proved that he is hardly the most thick-skinned of coaches.
Yet it’s also true that he is too guarded to be drawn into a game of verbal tit-for-tat.
And so Ruttensteiner will need some pretty tasty bait on the end of his line if he is to get a bite ahead of next Saturday’s big match-up at Hampden.
‘Let’s see what he throws in this time,’ says Clarke, just the hint of a grin creeping across his face. ‘It won’t affect the game.’
The Scotland boss can afford to be a little playful on the back of how the September set of World Cup qualifiers played out.
Ragged in Copenhagen, Scotland were a more coherent, if wasteful,
proposition in the narrow
Let’s see what he throws in this time. It won’t affect the game
win over Moldova before producing arguably the most complete performance of the manager’s reign in Austria.
The six points accrued from that triple-header has not only substantially enhanced prospects of a World Cup play-off place but quelled some of the dissatisfaction that hung in the affair after the conclusion of the Euros.
Having performed his perfunctory post-match duties after that tournament-ending defeat to Croatia at Hampden, Clarke retreated to the shadows, and no doubt his favourite angling spots.
He would not utter a word in public for more than two months and, while he may personally have been comfortable with that vacuum, it allowed the sense of unease to fester.
As a consequence, events in the first half in Copenhagen seemed like an extension of the unravelling at the end of the Euros.
Clarke maintains there was an overreaction to the 2-0 defeat to the Danes. Taking the scoreline in isolation, he would have a point.
But most of the criticism was quite legitimately focused on team selection — specifically captain Andy Robertson’s fish-out-of-water turn at right wing-back, a positional switch that undermined the fundamentals on which the team’s 3-5-2 formation had been built.
The long stretches of downtime in the international calendar may cause Clarke to overthink. But his reluctance to engage makes it harder to empathise and understand.
At a small media briefing to accompany his latest squad announcement, he did open up a little. And he conceded that it can take him days to clear his brain after the intensity of an international meet.
‘I am pretty level-headed,’ he says. ‘I try not to get too excited, as you have probably noticed, but I try not to get to down either.
‘The Euros was a great experience, a learning curve for everyone because we hadn’t been there for a while.
‘Any international camp is intense, so it normally takes me three or four days to come down a little bit. My missus is good at keeping out of my way, letting me decompress.
‘It took me more than three days after the last camp but that was particularly tough with the Covid issues leading into it, injuries and what I felt was an overreaction to the defeat in Denmark from certain quarters.
‘The performance against Moldova here was decent, I don’t care what anyone else says. We should have scored more goals but that was the only thing missing, so we took a feelgood factor into the Austria game.
‘We knew that was a big game for us and we got the win. If we’d got three points out of the week and been unbeaten, we’d have been more disappointed.
‘It’s given us a chance. We are in control of our own destiny.’
Scotland’s prospects of getting to Qatar 2022 have been aided by the Israelis’ rollercoaster form. On the night Scotland beat Moldova, Ruttensteiner’s side were outshooting Austria by an improbable 5-2 scoreline. They then went to Denmark and were crushed 5-0.
If those results suggest a flaky outfit, there’s a stack of evidence to suggest next Saturday’s match-up with Scotland will be tight.
Since 2018, the sides have met six times across three competitions. Each has won twice, with the series balanced up by two draws, the latest of which came at the start of the current qualifying campaign back in March.
According to Ruttensteiner, Scotland should start as favourites on account of a deeper talent pool.
Stick both squads on the open transfer market and Clarke’s clutch of high-level Premier League operators would accrue a fortune.
Yet it’s also true that Israel’s forward line is much more potent than the options available to Clarke.
Aston Villa midfielder John McGinn is Scotland’s top scorer with ten and then there’s a six-goal gap back to Lyndon Dykes, Ryan Fraser and Ryan Christie.
Ruttensteiner can call on Eran Zahavi, who has 31 from 67 appearances including two at Hampden Park. Now 34, he’s Israel’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a talismanic yet temperamental player who lights up on the international stage.
The PSV Eindhoven man has an able support cast that has most recently been augmented by the arrival of teenage winger Liel Abada, a £3.5 million signing for Celtic, who has scored six times already this season.
‘I like the make-up of their team,’ admits Clarke. ‘It is structured well and they have dangerous players up front. I like (Manor) Solomon, who plays in the little half position, half-midfield, half-forward.
‘Zahavi is capable of dropping in deep and he can score left foot and right. He is a handful.
‘(Moanes) Dabour, if he plays, is a good target player who does well in the German Bundesliga. And if they play
Shon Weismann, he is always stretching the pitch, always a threat on the shoulder.’
After the teams’ encounter in Tel Avivi in March, Ruttensteiner commented that Scotland were ‘almost not on the pitch’ during the first half.
Clarke has been poring over the footage to establish how to avoid a repeat.
He explained:
‘Every game against Israel has been very tight. The one I have concentrated most on is the game over there, the 1-1.
‘I think it will again be tight this time because it is a big game for both countries in terms of finishing second in the group.
‘There is a lot at stake and hopefully the big crowd at Hampden will help us get over the line.’ Having secured a landmark result in Vienna, Clarke’s team should almost pick itself barring the odd injury or Covid disruption.
Scott McTominay’s return offers a strong option for midfield or on the right side of the back three. ‘It’s nice to have Scott back,’ says Clarke. ‘It’s a shame that he didn’t make the last camp but we showed we can compete without him.
‘He will need to come in and be good in the camp, get himself back in the team. I think the competition for places is good.
‘If you look at the games last month, Nathan Patterson was lively against Moldova and then we went to Austria and Stephen O’Donnell played right wingback and was exceptional, too. ‘Suddenly in a position that looked a little bit light, we have good competition.
‘The group is growing together and moments like the night in Austria when you beat a team that is seeded above you, can only help the development of this group. ‘There’s more improvement to come.’