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Scotland at Euro 2024: ‘Four points to qualify’ – Clarke seeks historic progress – BBC Sport
Steve Clarke says Scotland’s ambition is to go into their final Euro 2024 Group A game with a chance of progressing to the next round.
The Scots open the tournament against hosts Germany in Munich on Friday. Switzerland on 19 June and Hungary on 23 June are Clarke’s other assignments.
Scotland have never gone beyond the opening group stage at a major tournament and picked up just one point from three matches at the delayed Euro 2020.
“The bottom line is we need four points to come out the group, that guarantees that you’ll come out of the group almost forever,” Clarke told BBC Sport. “That always happens.
“Three points and a zero goal difference would probably get out of the group so that’s what we have to look at – every game in isolation, make sure that we’re competitive in every game and realistically you go into the last game with a chance to qualify.
“Hopefully, we’ve done it before that with the points tally from the first two games but if we get to the last game like we did in the last tournament, we had to go to Wembley, we had to get at least a point against England, we gave ourselves a chance going into the Croatia game.
“Okay, we didn’t quite get over the line but at one each in the Croatia game you’ve got a chance, you’ve always got that hope, that expectation that you might do it.
“We play against Hungary in the last game, that’s where we want to be – in a similar situation where we know we can get a result and we can qualify.”
Clarke, who has 25 wins from his 55 matches in charge of Scotland, has a “fairly good idea” of his starting line-up in Munich.
And he said: “I’ve probably got two in my mind that I’m still mulling over and we’ll work on that in the next couple of days.”
Captain Andy Robertson and Lawrence Shankland returned to training in Garmisch-Partenkirchen after going off early during Monday’s session.
Kenny McLean joined the group after sitting out the opening day, with Stuart Armstrong now fully reintegrated after working on his own to recover his fitness.
Rangers midfielder Ryan Jack was the only absentee.
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