Steve Clarke: Scotland World Cup place would ‘put right’ Ukraine defeat

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke says World Cup qualification would “put right” the disappointment of failing to beat Ukraine in the play-offs for the 2022 finals.

Clarke led the country back to a major men’s tournament for the first time since 1998 by qualifying for Euro 2020 and repeated the feat for last summer’s Euros.

But, in what is about to become a record-breaking tenure, he is determined to banish the memory of the 3-1 Hampden defeat that ended hopes of a place in Qatar.

“It’s something we’d like to put right, for sure,” he said before Sunday’s game with Belarus, live across the BBC.

Victory would enhance the Scots’ chances of getting to a first men’s World Cup in 28 years and, combined with defeat for Greece in Denmark, would guarantee another play-off place.

Scotland finished second behind the Danes in the last campaign, losing only to the group winners, and are set go head-to-head with them again this time.

“It was on the back of what I felt was a really good campaign,” Clarke recalled of the Ukraine game, in which victory would have set up a play-off final with Wales.

“Everybody forgets that game should have been played in March [it was rescheduled because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine], when we would have had more people fit.

“You get to the game in June and the build-up was very, very strange and we’d lost two or three key players – and it didn’t go for us on the night.

“Disappointment, yes. Something we’d like to put right, yes.

“But also, when you’ve been in the game as long as me, you accept that there will be negative results and there will be difficult moments. That was certainly one of them because we felt that we had done enough in the qualifying campaign.”