Scotland head coach Steve Clarke says he had to play to Kieran Tierney's ego in order to get the former Celtic left-back into left-centre-back.
Clarke has two of the best left-back's in world football at his disposal in Arsenal man Tierney and Liverpool superstar Andy Robertson, who is his captain.
Tierney has moved to the left of his 3-5-2 formation while Clarke keeps Robertson in a position more natural to him. This only happened though after Clarke's chat with the Muirhouse star who left Celtic for Arsenal in 2019.
Soul-searching was needed after a 4-0 thumping in Russia in October 2019 and Clarke turned to the Gunners ace for a solution.
He told the High Performance Podcast: “Defensively we weren’t great and needed a change. I phoned my coaches and said ‘we can’t go with a back four, I want to go with a back three’.
“I had never coached a back three in my life so it was a challenge for me and my coaches. We had two of the best left-backs in world football, Tierney and Robertson, and had to figure out how to get them in the team.
“My idea was that Tierney could play centre-back and I had this mad idea that Scott McTominay could play as one of the others.
“I had a really good conversation with Tierney to tell him he was going to be the best left-sided centre-back that Scotland had ever had.
“A myth had built up around Kieran that he didn’t want to come and play with the national team, which wasn’t correct. But I think he always felt that he was a better left-back than Andy Robertson.
"Every player thinks they’re better than the immediate competition and if you compare them, there isn’t a cigarette paper between them.
"I had to persuade Kieran that he was better than Andy and that’s why I trusted him to play left centre-back and not Andy. Now, that’s probably not strictly true but that’s how I had to sell it to Kieran."
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