Steve Clarke didn’t even last half a minute. The Scotland manager sat down with BBC’s Eilidh Barbour after a 3-0 loss to Brazil in Miami, and 23 seconds later he was done. Walked away. Left the interview hanging. It was that kind of night for Scotland.
Vinicius Junior scored twice. Matheus Cunha added another. But the real story wasn’t Brazil’s quality. It was Scotland’s mistakes. Defensive errors, soft goals, the kind of stuff that gets you sent home from a World Cup. And now Scotland sits third in Group C with a goal difference of minus-3, waiting on other results to see if they even make the knockout rounds for the first time ever.
Clarke was emotional. You could see it in his face. Barbour asked for his thoughts on the game and got eight words back: “We made it difficult for ourselves, that’s it.” She followed up. Asked if it was frustrating that Brazil didn’t have to work for their goals. Clarke agreed. “We gave them the goals, we gave them the game they wanted. Disappointing.” Then Barbour mentioned the waiting game. Clarke didn’t want to hear it. “I don’t even want to think about that. Sorry, I don’t even think about that.” And he was gone.
He came back later for another round with Barbour, and this time he was more open. Maybe he needed a minute. “You see their quality in the final third of the pitch, let’s be honest, the best team won,” he said. “Unbelievable, the shift the players put in, in that humidity, outstanding. We have to be better, if we want to compete at this level.”
Then he dropped the line that pretty much sums it up. “Only Scotland can get a winnable first game, then No. 5 and No. 6 in the world next two games, that’s the level we’re at.” And then, bluntly: “For sure, I think we’re going home.”
Midfielder John McGinn was a little more measured but just as gutted. “We lose poor goals at poor times against a team that can punish you with quality,” he told BBC One. “The lads are gutted, we fell short on quality tonight but we gave it absolutely everything. The lads are empty now.” He said qualifying is “unlikely” but they’ll wait and see. “Hopefully the journey is not over and if we have to go again, we will go again.”
Scotland made history just getting to this World Cup. Clarke masterminded that. But the dream of making the knockout rounds for the first time is hanging by a thread. And the image that’ll stick is him walking away from a microphone after 23 seconds. That’s a man who felt the weight of it all at once.
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