Scotland owe nation performance after Germany defeat – Pat Nevin – BBC.com
It's not about what's happened. It's about what's now going to happen.
Glancing sombrely back on Scotland's heavy defeat by Germany on Friday night, it was always a possibility something like that could befall us.
My thought before it was, if we were at our very best we might have got a draw – we weren’t. The Germans were a lot more up for it, confident. Toni Kroos was superb, their two wide players were exceptional.
They saw where our weaknesses were and they went at them. It’s really good technical management.
It’s a tough night for the players. And also a tough night for the head coach, Steve Clarke.
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Steve will be sensible but serious about what happened on Friday night.
He obviously knows these things better than I do, but I’d like to have had wee Billy Gilmour in there. These tournaments, it’s about keeping the ball, because if you give it away, you don’t get it back for five minutes, you end up chasing shadows.
When you play top technical teams, the one thing you must do is hold the ball. He’s our best.
Steve will go through every aspect of the game. Although I don’t think he’ll go through every technical mistake and bad pass, that’s not the problem.
We had a game plan that really, really, really didn’t work. So, when that’s happening, you think ‘right, let’s look at this’.
We ended up playing a 5-4-1 and it didn’t work for us. You can’t allow that to happen against the Swiss- and I don’t think Steve will. He’ll be thinking "how do I change it?".
I mean, you get one sent off, but it was done before that. It was already looking like four, five or six.
Ryan Porteous will be disappointed because he let himself down.
It was a horrifying tackle. Hopefully I’m fair-minded enough that, when I saw the replay, I wanted him sent off. I don’t want to see a tackle like that happen to anyone.
The first thing he should do is apologise to Ilkay Gundogan. The red mist comes down and he does it out of desperation, but you can’t do that. Your team-mates are knackered now after chasing shadows.
It’s a big error, but did it make a huge difference? Probably not.
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There’s no point crying over Friday’s result, it’s gone now. Players aren’t like that, we’ve had it our whole careers. If we sat and worried about every defeat, you’d never be a footballer.
I’ve played in some bad ones. I remember a 5-1 defeat by Portugal, who were a good team, but even so. We never thought anyone could beat us 5-1 because we were a good team.
It’s not about that game, it’s about the next game. Do you buckle?
If we come out with a right good attitude against the Swiss with positivity, we play the way we’ve played in a number of games in the past few years, we’ve got a good chance.
The heroes of the night were the Scotland fans.
There’s nothing worse at the end of a game if you’ve been horsed 5-1 – and it could have been more – and you have to stay out. You just can’t let them down given the way they’ve come over here and backed the team.
They’ll be needed in Cologne. Everybody will need to give more back. You can’t ignore it.
Trust me, the players feel that the fans, and the country, are now owed a performance.
Pat Nevin was speaking to BBC Sport Scotland’s Scott Mullen
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