'Sir Steve Clarke' - Departing Scotland boss 'deserves knighthood' as 'nonsense' claim blasted by ex-assistant
Departing Scotland head coach told he deserves to be crowned after seven year reign.
Steve Clarke has been told he deserves a statue outside Hampden Park after becoming the first manager to guide Scotland to three major tournaments.
Clarke, 62, quit his role as Scotland head coach after his side’s group stage exit from the World Cup at the weekend, with the 3-0 defeat to Brazil in their final Group C game proving costly, despite penning a renewed four-year contract on the eve of the tournament.
His exit brought down the curtain on a seven-year reign that saw him lead the nation back to the World Cup for the first time since 1998. He also achieved back-to-back qualification to the European Championships, making him the first manager in Scottish history to manage the country at three major tournaments.
While sections of the Tartan Army support have welcomed the news due to Clarke’s inability to get out of the group stages for the third successive tournament, former Scotland assistant boss Mark McGhee believes he has transformed the outlook of the national team and deserves immense credit for the job he’s done - even going as far as saying he should be in line for a knighthood.
“I have my feelings about it,” McGhee told TalkSPORT. “I think the performance here in the competition is something else other than the qualification and I think Steve deserves a huge amount of credit for three qualifications, two European Championships and a World Cup. The joy that it’s brought, we’ve seen it, we saw it in Boston, we’ve seen it in Miami. The joy that it’s brought to the Tartan Army.
"The opportunity it’s given the Tartan Army to promote Scotland as a country and to take the reputation overseas, to improve on it and to raise it has left Scotland in such a good light after this competition and Steve Clarke gets all the credit for that. And I’m going to go one step further, I’ve been away and I’ve looked at the comparisons and I’ve made comparisons with Gareth Southgate.
“They both took over when things weren’t at their best and they had to do certain things with the squad. The first thing both of them did was Steve made Scotland, and Gareth made England, much harder to beat. What he’s done is, he’s made them a country now that expect to qualify for competitions. I’m going to say this, I think it’s now Sir Gareth Southgate and I don’t see that there’s any doubt, Steve Clarke has every right to claim a knighthood. I would not object to the fact that in seven years, three qualifications, magnificent for the country, why not Sir Steve Clarke.”
McGhee, has also scoffed at the idea that Clarke possessed the best Scotland side of all time. The ex-Celtic and Aberdeen player believes the current squad does have some quality within it, but think the exiting head coach has done a good job of getting results from a largely ‘ordinary’ squad.
“I keep hearing people saying that this is the best group of Scotland players ever,” said McGhee. “I think that is absolute nonsense. You go back to the Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish and those eras, there was a different level of players in those days. We have some really great players now in the likes of John McGinn and [Scott] McTominay and we’re going to have some other ones grow with the likes of Ben Gannon-Doak in there. But I don’t see it as the strongest Scotland squad ever so therefore Steve Clarke deserves a lot of credit for getting what I think is a fairly ordinary group of players to three major competitions.”
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