World Cup 'last piece of jigsaw' for Scotland men

Reaching next summer's World Cup is "the last piece of the jigsaw for Steve Clarke and his players", says Scottish Football Association chief executive Ian Maxwell.

Maxwell believes the players can now "touch it" and "smell it" after a positive start to the qualifying campaign with a draw in Denmark and victory over Belarus.

Full points in front of a raucous Hampden Park this week in the matches against Greece (Thursday) and Belarus (Sunday) would put Scotland men on the brink of World Cup qualification for the first time in 27 years.

"There's not a lot of people around the country that wouldn't get excited with World Cup qualification," said Maxwell.

"We saw the impact that qualification for Euro 2020 and Euro 2024 had and I'm sure that the World Cup would be similar. It's been a long, long time since we've been at one and it would be brilliant to be back there. We've given ourselves a chance.

"You need to have a good start, you need to pick up points when you can. You're not going to get any second chances. Regardless of how the games go this week, we're still going to be in it come the end of the last window in November but the boys have given themselves a great platform.

"We had a couple of really good results in the first window and they'll be able to touch it, they'll be able to smell it. There's no reason to think that we're not going to get the results that we need."

One of Maxwell's big calls in his first year as chief executive, along with the hiring committee, was to appoint Alex McLeish's successor. Clarke has been in his post since 2019, making him the longest serving Scotland men's head coach since Craig Brown, who took the side to the 1998 World Cup finals in France.

Clarke, 62, has indicated the current qualifying campaign will be his last.

"In 2019, when he took over, if we said this is what the Scotland team is going to achieve over Steve's tenure, I think every Scotland fan would have bitten your hand off for it," said Maxwell.

"This is the last piece of the jigsaw for him, the last piece of the jigsaw for the players - getting to the World Cup. We want to get there in the summer and we'll see what happens from there but he's been a tremendous manager for us.

"We've had full houses at Hampden for a number of years now and that's testament to the team being successful on the pitch and the country rallying behind them, which only comes when you're qualifying for major tournaments, when you're getting the results that you need and he's got a track record of doing that.

"He's been very clear that he wants to get to a World Cup and we'll talk about that then. That's the position. The focus for everybody has to be on the finals, on qualifying for the World Cup next year and going and enjoying next summer."

Maxwell was speaking at the expansion of the SFA and Scottish government programme 'Extra Time', which aims to provide sport and activity clubs for low income families across the country.

"The big picture from the Extra Time perspective is to roll it out across every school in the country," said the chief executive.

"That would be fantastic for us, that kids are taking part in sport. My area is football but kids taking part in sport generally is a very positive thing particularly round about their school day; particularly about the energy that that gives them, the interest that gives them, the excitement that gives them.

"I'm not sure every kid loves going to school but when you can tag some sort of sport on to it then they definitely want to be more involved and more engaged, so it's huge for us."