John McGinn insists he will take the same mentality into Wednesday’s Hampden crunch as he has when facing war-torn Ukraine’s Premier League stars.
The Aston Villa midfielder admits his sympathy for the opposition will be put on hold for 90 minutes - or even 120 if the World Cup playoff goes to extra time - as his World Cup dream takes priority.
McGinn has faced Vitaliy Mykolenko, Andriy Yarmolenko and Oleksandr Zinchenko at club level while the Everton, West Ham United and Manchester City’s stars have been worried about events in their homeland.
And the 27-year-old can use that experience to ensure he is fully focused on the job in hand of helping Steve Clarke’s men move to within 90 minutes of a place at Qatar this winter.
McGinn told Sky Sports: “The respect will be there. I can’t really imagine what those players are going through. Their families will be in a really difficult situation.
“But it was the same when we play against (Vitaliy) Mykolenko, (Andriy) Yarmolenko and (Oleksandr) Zinchenko - you have respect and sympathy for them but we all want to win.
“We’ve all got aspirations to play in a World Cup and Ukraine are one of the teams that stand in our way.
“We have the utmost respect for their situation but for the 90 minutes or 120 minutes we will give our all to win that game and that’s all that matters.
“You can’t get away from how horrible the situation is - our sympathies go to the players, staff and everyone involved in the situation - but it’s important for us not to caught up in the motion.
“We’re there to win a football game and try and achieve our dream so when it comes to motivation and it’s up to us to make sure Scotland is the most motivated team.”
Scotland are unbeaten in eight and Ukraine haven’t lost in seven but McGinn said Clarke’s men will be ready if they are put on the spot after securing a place at Euro 2020 thanks to penalty shoot-out wins over Israel and Serbia.
McGinn said: “We’ve been practicing. We practice if it’s a playoff match or one that could go to extra time and penalties we take one at the end of every session.
“We’ll be prepared and do our homework but hopefully it doesn’t get to there but if it goes to penalties then we have the character and ability to hopefully score the maximum amount of pens.”
