Scotland head coach Steve Clarke has conceded he “feels the pressure” to get the nation to their first World Cup finals in 28 years.<\/b><\/p>\n
Under Clarke’s guidance the Scots have reached two European Championships, but have failed to emulate the achievement of Craig Brown’s group in 1998. <\/p>\n
The country’s latest qualification campaign, this time for next summer’s finals in the United States, Canada and Mexico, commences away to formidable Denmark on 5 September.<\/p>\n
“I feel the pressure,” the stoic and normally unshakable Clarke told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I think there is a pressure because we do want to get there, the whole country wants to get there, and obviously as a head coach a little bit of that comes back on me.<\/p>\n
“But I’m looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n
The Scotland boss was speaking to Match of the Day’s Kelly Cates as he prepares for what potentially could be his last campaign.<\/p>\n
The 61-year-old, who is due to name his squad next week, has previously said he is 75% sure his time in charge of his country will come to a close after this World Cup campaign ends.<\/p>\n
It is a journey which started just over six years ago, with Scotland having not qualified for a major finals since that French sojourn under Brown.<\/p>\n
A summer fling has been flung twice at the Euros, albeit with the Scots falling flat in their attempts to make it out of a group for the first time.<\/p>\n
In World Cup qualifying, a glorious chance to make it to Qatar was passed up in a home play-off to Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland head coach Steve Clarke has conceded he “feels the pressure” to get the nation to their first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-364257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-scotland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115071631134250377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}