Roberto Martinez highlights Steve Clarke’s ‘incredible’ Scottish record

Portugal manager Roberto Martinez believes Steve Clarke’s “incredible record” in guiding Scotland to Euro 2024 will overshadow their recent drop in results.

Scotland travel to Lisbon on Sunday for Nations League Group A1 play. They lost their opening match 3-2 to Poland and have one win in 13 games after failing to qualify from the group stage in Germany.

“I think it’s important to measure what Steve Clark has done for the national team,” Martinez said. “He qualifies with an incredible record – an impressive path to the European Championship is something to believe in and support.

“In international football it is not easy to go to major tournaments. My experience tells me that it is worth continuing and believing in a project that goes beyond the emotional results of a major tournament in which the best players in Europe participate.

“But Steve Clark clearly has a lot of experience, he’s played in big dressing rooms and I think it’s more about what he’s done well than highlighting recent results.”

Martinez handed Clarke his first defeat as Scotland manager with a 3-0 win over the Belgium boss in June 2019. However, he said the European Championship qualifying win over Spain showed progress had been made since then.

“They understand the players really well, they have a really good age range, a lot of caps in their starting XI and Steve Clarke obviously knows the players really well,” he added.

“The game against Spain will clearly be a standout for me. I think what was achieved against Spain at Hampden and away in Spain showed that this Scottish game is a very competitive group.”