Young team will be raring to go, says Gemmill
Steve Clarke said this week that he will use the Scotland Under-21 squad’s trip to Turkey and Austria as his standby list for Euro 2024.
The Scotland boss indicated that if he needed to call up new faces due to injuries this summer, he would turn to the young team.
But any concerns they might not be up to the task were swiftly batted away by U-21s manager Scot Gemmill who said his kids won’t need any extra motivation to perform in his side’s upcoming friendlies in Istanbul and Wiener Neustadt.
Gemmill has selected Aberdeen’s Connor Barron, Sturm Graz’s Max Johnston, Bristol City’s Tommy Conway and current U21s skipper Josh Doig – all of whom had been tipped for inclusion in Clarke’s squad for Germany.
But the former Everton, Nottingham Forest and Scotland midfielder knows he won’t have to remind them what’s at stake this summer.
Gemmill said: “Anything can happen in football during this preparation period so the players have to be ready.
“But I don’t think we will have to have that conversation. The players are very intelligent and will have watched Steve speaking on Wednesday; they’re all watching the full squad very closely.
“We’ll be concentrating on preparing to play our own games and if anything happens we will react to that.
“It’s hard to compare with previous squads because the squad changes quite frequently. In November we had six or seven players missing, but that sped up the process of giving opportunities to other players.
“With this squad who are going to play these upcoming games, we’ve lost three of the defenders who have been playing recently so it’s changing all the time. It’s an opportunity to see other players.
“The U21s have a limited number of games throughout the year and it’s about maximising that opportunity. Hopefully, everybody can see we’re getting that right because a lot of them are with Steve in the full squad.”
Scotland are in a promising position in their Euro 2025 qualifiers – they sit in second place behind Spain in Group B and are in the top three best runners-up position, which would be enough to secure their first finals since 1996.
They have four games left in the autumn against Spain and Belgium (home) and Malta and Kazakhstan (away) but Gemmill insists it’s more important he gets to work with his squad again.
He said: “It’s important the U21s play at every opportunity they can.”