News Story

Scotland’s performance in North America was deemed irrelevant to Steve Clarke’s future as the Scottish Football Association opted for consistency in handing the head coach a new long-term contract.

The 62-year-old has signed up until the end of the 2030 World Cup campaign to end uncertainty over his future.

Clarke has led Scotland to three major tournaments out of four following 10 consecutive qualifying failures as well as a spell in the UEFA Nations League top tier.

However, some fans were keen to see how Scotland fare against Haiti, Morocco and Brazil in the World Cup after two largely disappointing European Championships which saw the team finish bottom of their group with one point each time.

“That’s a very short-term view,” SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell said. “He’s our most successful manager. He’s qualified for three tournaments out of four.

“We’re not going to make a decision on the manager based on how the World Cup does or doesn’t go. That’s never the way we’ve done it. We’ve always taken a balanced, long-term view.

“When you look at the squad, there will be one or two that perhaps don’t play many more games after this World Cup, there’s going to be a bit of transition.

“We want an experienced international manager who knows exactly what it takes to get Scotland to major tournaments to lead that, and he’s really excited about that prospect as well.

“Consistency has been key. When you look at his squads and the number of consistent players he’s had in those squads, that’s got us to the point where we can beat Denmark in such an important game.

“We feel that consistency from a head coach perspective is really important for the next four years.”

Clarke had been keen to resolve his future before flying out to the United States on Sunday.

The former Kilmarnock boss stressed the development “gives us certainty ahead of the tournament”.

He added in a statement: “Stability is the key to success in football and this has certainly been the case during my last seven years as head coach.

“It’s important we evolve and make improvements and I look forward to working with the new chief football officer, Craig Mulholland, to increase the pipeline of talent to the senior squad through the national youth teams.”

Clarke had rated his chances of staying on as 50-50 in March after previously intimating he was likely to depart, and hinted that he had been sounded out by interested clubs.

But Maxwell said: “It was always the plan. Listen, we said since we qualified it’s taken a huge amount of work to make sure all our preparation is done.

“A number of trips back and forth to the States. Steve’s been over a number of times along with the rest of the coaching staff to make sure we’ve got the right preparation, we’ve got the right training camp, we’ve got the right friendlies.

“Once we got all that out of the way then we sat down for a very easy, very quick conversation about what the contract was going to look like, and we were both delighted to get it over the line.”