Scotland women’s manager Pedro Martinez Losa believes that his side were dealt a significant disadvantage by not kicking any of their UEFA Nations League double headers off with a home tie.
They go into the last two games of the campaign having taken just one point from four games but the Spaniard is irked that they were on the backfoot throughout the campaign.
They round off now with an away game in Belgium before hosting England at Hampden next month
“What I have learned from camps is that the energy from one game to the other one is very important,” said Martinez Losa. “It is why I highlighted how important it was to have the first game at home and we have not had that. That is a disadvantage. When you play at home you can win and then travel.
“Travel is always going to bring a fatigue and then you have the dynamics of winning and losing. We felt that we were in a disadvantage. That is the reality because we also did not have the chance to have a Friday night game at Hampden and with all our fans. We all want to develop the women’s game and there would have been an advantage to take from that.
“But also The Netherlands played us in the last double header but they had the whole eight or nine days training in their own training centre without having to travel. They only had to travel for the actual game. We had to travel and come back and deal with that fatigue. When you can see that games are decided by small margins, that is a big advantage.”
Placed in League A1, it was always going to be a challenging campaign for Scotland with Martinez Losa insisting that he still believes that his side can get the two wins that would enable them to see off relegation.
“We cannot be negative,” he said. “We came to the Nations League believing it was going to be challenging but in the first camp we lost two of our best players and in the second camp we were without four of our best players.
“I won’t complain. I still have a dream job and a good group and we believe we can bring the players to the level where we can win every match.
“We can dream about having that last game against England and winning. What if? We have to create an atmosphere from Monday that we are convinced we can do that. You want to be in the World Cup and the European Championships? All those big moments require that you do that.”
