Midway through The Three Kings, the new documentary telling the epic story of a trio of Scottish footballing giants, Sir Matt Busby captures the insecurity of the modern manager.
In a metaphor detailing the strained and sleepless nights which follow every triumph, a 61-year-old Busby tells a BBC interviewer: ‘You’re always frightened of the next game. You’re sometimes looking for snow and it’s not falling.’
When it came to Busby and the tragedy of the Munich air disaster, Belgrade played a regrettable cameo. When they pen the script for Steve Clarke’s life story, the events of last Thursday night guarantee an altogether beefier role for the Serbian capital.
Scotland’s November could get even better if they beat Israel in Netanya on Wednesday night
Yet, like Busby and every successful Scottish manager who ever lived, Clarke still fears inclement weather. When the clouds dispersed last Friday morning, the national team might have qualified for the sunlit uplands of the Euro 2020 finals.
But the current manager played in an era when the national team made the mistake of taking qualification for granted. And, after France 98, the snow started tumbling from the sky.
‘Maybe as a nation we were guilty of standing still too long,’ said Clarke. ‘Everybody went past us.
Steve Clarke has said Scotland stood still for so long and that other nations went past them
‘We are in a position now where we are trying to catch up. We don’t want to lose that momentum. We want to keep going.
‘We stopped qualifying for tournaments. It has taken us a long time to get back to qualifying.
‘We don’t want to wait as long for the next one. In fact, I don’t want to wait very long at all. I want to qualify for Qatar 2022 and so do the players.
‘At any level, you are only as good as your next game. You need to be focused on the targets ahead. You can’t stand still.’
Between last Thursday and the imposition of further lockdown measures in the central belt, Scotland remembered how to enjoy itself.
Videos of exuberant dressing-room joy made it on to social media. In sudden demand from British broadcasters, the septuagenarians who sang the 1977 hit Yes Sir, I Can Boogie were unexpectedly thrust back into the charts. Baccara, like Scotland, felt as if they’d won the lottery.
When the wine wore off, sobriety returned with a narrow defeat in Slovakia. Yet victory in Israel would restore the forward momentum and confirm the suspicion this is a Scotland team heading in the right direction.
Topping their Nations League group over the Czech Republic would earn Clarke’s side a promotion to Pool A and glamour ties against world football’s giants in future. As well as the boost to SFA finances decimated by Covid-19 and redundancy packages for 18 staff, a win in Israel would enhance hopes of securing one of two qualification play-off places for the Qatar World Cup.
Promotion to League A would see Scotland’s players come up against Europe’s elite nations
‘If you are challenging yourself against the very best over the course of six matches over a three-month period, then you can only get better as a group,’ Clarke observed.
‘You can look deeper inside yourself and find ways to compete with the top teams and that’s what we want.
‘We want to be in that position. It would be good. And it’s something that we are all determined to make happen tomorrow night, with all respect to Israel.
‘They are a good team and they have shown in recent matches against us that there is not a lot between the two sides. We will have to be at our best to get the result that we want.’
Scotland and Israel’s international footballers know each other so well they should be sharing a bubble.
Wednesday night marks the fifth meeting of the two teams since October 2018. The last time they met on Israeli soil, Alex McLeish’s team fell to a disjointed and worrying defeat. And the motivation for Willi Ruttensteiner’s team is not hard to find. When they met in the play-off semi-final at Hampden last month, the Scots won their first-ever penalty shoot-out when David Marshall saved the spot-kick of star man Eran Zahavi.
‘When you play for your country, you are always motivated,’ said Clarke. ‘I don’t think the Israelis are any different. We will be motivated as well because it’s an important game for us. We want three points. We want to start the next unbeaten run and we want to start it with a win. Both teams will be motivated, no problem.
‘The unbeaten run was great when you were part of it but it came to an end on Sunday. It wasn’t a bad performance but losing is difficult, so we want to start the next run now.’
Scotland were brought down to earth with a bump when they lost to Slovakia at the weekend
Three games in six days is unusual in any environment and Clarke has benefited from a precious commodity an international manager rarely gets with his players. Time.
‘You have to learn to manage the squad a little bit more,’ he continued. ‘The start of the week was always the biggest game. Then you have to deal with the emotions leading on from that into the next two.
‘It’s good to be around them. I’m used to club football.
‘When you’ve got your players day in day out, it’s very intense, like a club situation.
‘There’s also a little bit of history. We spoke before about creating history. We’ve created that history.
‘Now we need to move on to the next chapter. We were focused on the game on Sunday.
‘You saw the performance was good, focused and it deserved more than we got. Hopefully, you will see the same tomorrow night because three points is vital.’