PERSPECTIVE can be hard to come by in football management, and particularly when the hopes and dreams of an entire country rest upon your shoulders. But every so often, even those at the top of the game are reminded of just what is really important.
Steve Clarke was devastated of course after Scotland’s defeat to Ukraine that ended the nation’s hopes of making it to the World Cup in Qatar, just as much as any member of the Tartan Army. But visiting his dad Eddie - who is suffering from dementia - after the game brought home to him that the defeat didn’t in fact represent the end of the world.
Clarke has spoken in the past of how his father was his inspiration to pursue a career in football. He was once a highly-regarded amateur player in Ayrshire, before a car accident stopped him from reaching his full potential.
So, while the players and supporters licked their wounds, Clarke went back to see the man who started him out on this path in the first place, and reset himself to once again go out and make him proud.
“I went to see my dad, he’s in hospital and not very well,” Clarke said. “That puts everything into perspective.
“He’s brilliant but he doesn’t know what’s happening, he doesn’t know the game, he doesn’t know we played, he doesn’t know we got beat.
“That’s just the way it is. It’s tough, it was tough, but it puts everything into perspective for me.”
Perhaps it was that reminder about priorities that makes it so easy for Clarke to quickly move on his next assignment, which is to take Scotland to the European Championships in Germany in two years’ time.
Unlike many in Scotland fans perhaps, he watched the play-off final between Wales and Ukraine, but instead of being left with a feeling of ‘what if’, he came away from the match invigorated for the challenge of taking on the Ukrainians once more later in the year.
Though, he had plenty to say on the injustice of the winner of his own semi-final having to play the final so soon, when Wales had the luxury of fielding a second string in their Nations League against Poland.
When asked though if he would dwell on the disappointment of the defeat last week, Clarke said: “No because it’s gone.
“I think sometimes maybe you guys don’t realise how quickly you have to move on in professional sport. You just have to move on. That one’s gone there is no point looking back and looking back and thinking ‘what if’. It’s gone. Move on.
“I watched [the Wales game]. It wasn’t a hard watch. I felt sorry for Ukraine because they were asked to empty themselves at Hampden and then three days later they had to go again. That was a tough task.
“I’m not so sure UEFA’s fair play or sporting integrity was in play for that one. It was tough for Ukraine and I felt for them. But congratulations to Wales, I’m not taking anything away from the Welsh.
“Ukraine emptied themselves at Hampden, they had to. To have two massive games like that in such a short space of time was difficult for them. They put so much into the Hampden game and I felt for them a little bit.
“But you have to take your hat off to Wales they have had another great qualifying campaign and they are going to Qatar so well done to the Welsh.
“I’m watching it as a game of football because obviously we have Ukraine to play again in September so I’m looking to see how the Welsh lined up against them and what their tactics were, and I’m taking bits and pieces from that game which hopefully will help us play better against them in September.”
Clarke said that there will be some changes to his line-up from the team that lost to Ukraine as the Nations League campaign gets underway tonight against Armenia at Hampden, though not wholesale adjustments given the importance of making a winning start in the group.
He is mindful though of the need to bleed some of the younger players into his team as soon as he possibly can, so as to have continuity in his squad between qualification campaigns.
“It’s one of the things I thought about when I came in,” he said. “I looked at how to build.
“You can have your core and you can maybe have 15 or 16 players who are for this tournament and even the next one. But after that, they start to get too old and they start to drop out of the reckoning. You need to have people coming through behind.
“For the younger ones just now it’s more about picking up experience and being around the boys who are playing at a really high level every week. And hopefully feeling comfortable in the environment so that when we do ask them to step in and play the odd game here and there they are able to do that, and hopefully the odd game here and there will become a number of games over a period of time.
“Then when I transition from one group to the next group it’s hopefully a little bit smoother. We don’t want to be 23 years in the doldrums again.
“I think that’s the most important thing.”
