Steve Clarke insists he has not considered quitting his job at Scotland given the impact of the European Championship

Steve Clarke has insisted he has no intention of resigning as Scotland manager, despite facing heavy criticism following his team's elimination in the group stages of the European Championships earlier this summer.

After announcing his squad for the upcoming Nations League matches against Poland and Portugal, the 60-year-old appeared before the media at Hampden Stadium on Tuesday for the first time since the tournament defeat to Hungary in Stuttgart in June.

When asked if he had considered retiring after the disappointment at the European Championships, Clake said: “No.”

Clarke, whose contract runs until after the 2026 World Cup, explained with a smile why he felt compelled to stay: “My contract!

“I've always said that I would like to go to a World Cup with my country. I have a group of players who are determined to go to a World Cup with their country and for some of them it will be their last chance. That's the motivation.”

Clarke is “optimistic” that Scotland can recover from its disappointment at the European Championships in the same way that it recovered from its World Cup play-off defeat to Ukraine in 2022.

“We didn't achieve what we wanted to achieve in the tournament,” said Clarke. “I think the most important thing in football is that you have to learn to progress.”

“The last time we disappointed at this level was when we didn't make it to the World Cup. We went away, regrouped, came back and managed to qualify for Nations League A.

“We reacted well. The last qualifying round for the Euro 2024 was probably one of our best. We have to repeat that.”

Clarke stressed that he would “take lightly” the criticism levelled at him, but said injuries to players such as Lyndon Dykes, Lewis Ferguson, Aaron Hickey, Nathan Patterson and Ben Doak, as well as the loss of Kieran Tierney midway through the tournament, were a clear obstacle for Scotland.

“There will always be criticism if you don't achieve your goals,” Clarke said. “If all the criticism is directed at me, that's fine, I can handle it.”

“I think you have to be aware that the preparation for the tournament did not go smoothly.

“We lost a lot of players to injuries, even from training camp. We lost a lot of players. I think we showed that we are not as strong when we are missing one or two key players as we would be if we had those players on the team.”

“There are a lot of little things that make a team ready for a tournament. This wasn't our tournament. It didn't go the way we wanted and in the end you're disappointed. There are too many little things that didn't fit together.”

While Clarke recognises the frustration of a nation that has failed to progress beyond the group stage, he believes the fact that Scotland now comes to tournaments with a certain level of expectation among their fans is a sign of the progress the country has made in recent years.

“You can look at it in two ways, but for me it's a compliment because it means that I, my team and the players have done a really good job of raising expectations,” Clarke said.

“When I took the job, we hadn't been to a tournament for over 20 years. Now we've been to two of the last three, so we must have done something right.

“So you raise the expectations. If the expectation now is that you have to qualify for the tournament and get through the group stage, then that's exactly what we'll try to do at the next tournament in 2026.”