Steve Clarke challenged his Scotland squad to “create a bit of history” at Euro 2024 as they met up on Wednesday to prepare for the tournament.
The Scots kick off the continental showpiece in Germany against the host nation in Munich on June 14 before facing Switzerland in Cologne and Hungary in Stuttgart.
They will train in Glasgow over the next few days and then fly out to Portugal to face Gibraltar in a friendly on Monday prior to hosting Finland next Friday, a week ahead of the tournament opener.
Clarke is hoping that by the time the event begins, his team will be ready to enter uncharted territory by making it to the knockout phase of a major tournament for the first time.
“This squad have been fantastic for me and fantastic for their country and now they have a chance to create a bit of history, so let’s see if we can do that,” he told STV.
“We will need top level performances against good teams, we are going to have to play to our maximum in the three group games.
“I believe if we play to our maximum and we get the right amount of football luck, that you need sometimes, I believe we can do it, so that is something for us to aim for.”
The Scots are heading to their second consecutive Euros and Clarke is optimistic that his team will be better equipped than they were at the last tournament in 2021 when they took only one point from three matches against Czech Republic, England and Croatia.
“At the last tournament we maybe expected too much and didn’t get what we wanted,” he continued.
“We are going into this one with pretty much the same core squad so I’m excited to see how much we have improved.
“Hopefully we can go to Germany and show everybody that we have improved.
“Most of the boys have experience of tournament football and will know more about what to expect going into this one, so hopefully we can see the fruits of our work over the last three years since Euro 2020.”
