Andy Robertson admitted Scotland ‘didn’t show up’ as the suffering skipper issued an apology to the Tartan Army as their World Cup dream died.
Ukraine outplayed Steve Clarke’s men to win 3-1 at Hampden and set up a Qatar 2022 play-off final against Wales in Cardiff on Sunday.
And Liverpool star Robertson told Sky Sports: “It’s hugely disappointing. We’ve waited a long time for this game, our performances beforehand have been really good and we didn’t show up.
“It’s taken us 11 games to get here, finishing second and getting a home play-off and we have to hurt.
“The World Cup has gone for another four years and that’s really hard for us because we all have dreams of playing in that big tournament and we didn’t put in a performance that justified that.
“We know there will be scrutiny coming our way and we’ll be under fire but in there we have to stick together and look ahead to the Nations League.
"We’ve made massive strides and we’ll have to take perspective on that but tonight is not that night - all we can say is sorry to the fans and back home for disappointing them.”
Robertson admitted Scotland were left with too much to do after falling 2-0 behind shortly after Ryan Christie’s half time introduction following a flat first half.
Callum McGregor scored to set up a grandstand finish but it was too little, too late. Robbo said: “Ukraine started the game a lot better than us and it continued.
“We knew they were probably going to get tired and that was the case but we gave ourselves too much of an uphill battle.
“With the way the game was going we were a bit under pressure and had to try and stay in the game.
“We ended up pushing at the end - we put Granty (Hanley and Jack (Hendry) up - and you leave yourself open to the counter attack.
“We didn’t play the way we wanted to play and that’s the most disappointing thing and it’s passed us by now and we’ve let ourselves down after a positive campaign.
“We hoped the change at the break would have a positive impact. They were causing us problems with the press because they had two No. 6s.
“ Callum McGregor and Billy were doing too much running because we couldn’t really help them and we brought Ryan on to try and load the midfield.
“It worked but it was too late, we were 2-0 down. We had high hopes of starting the second half a lot differently and trying to play as we have in previous games but it was too much of an uphill battle.”
