{"id":406126,"date":"2025-09-07T20:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T20:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/406126\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T20:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T20:44:11","slug":"belarus-v-scotland-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/406126\/","title":{"rendered":"Belarus v Scotland &#8211; preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Head coach Steve Clarke says the quality of Scotland&#8217;s performance against Belarus on Monday is irrelevant as long as his side secure three points.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Belarusians lost 5-1 in Greece in their opening World Cup qualifier on Friday, but Clarke would take a one-goal win in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/cx20nlng8llo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">neutral venue of Hungary<\/a> as the Scots look to build on the positivity of an opening goalless draw in Denmark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We expect a tough night, they&#8217;re a competent side,&#8221; Clarke said. &#8220;I was a little bit surprised that they lost by the margin that they lost in Greece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;ll take the win if we can get it, however it comes. If it&#8217;s by one goal, if it&#8217;s by two goals, whatever. First of all, we need to make sure that we get the win.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Midfielder John McGinn spoke about the need for Scotland to get back to being &#8220;horrible&#8221; to play against, as they showed against Denmark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And Clarke agreed with that assessment, suggesting it is those attributes that could underpin Scotland&#8217;s attempts to reach the World Cup finals in United States, Canada and Mexico next summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Horrible in a good way,&#8221; the head coach said. &#8220;Horrible in that they make it really difficult for the opposition, they work ever so hard when we don&#8217;t have the ball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s nice to do the bits that catch the attention &#8211; the good shots, the good play &#8211; but the basics, the nuts and bolts of football, are about doing the dirty stuff, the stuff where you have to do your hard yards off the ball. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If we can do that across the six games, then I think we can get enough points.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Head coach Steve Clarke says the quality of Scotland&#8217;s performance against Belarus on Monday is irrelevant as long&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-406126","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\/115164968977893233","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406126","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=406126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}