Steve Clarke told his players at 19:00 local time on Saturday, in their Charlotte hotel, that he was ending his seven-year reign as Scotland head coach – the moment their World Cup exit was confirmed. The 62-year-old said it was an easy decision because he had always planned to depart if they failed to reach the knock-out stages.
Scotland’s campaign ended in the group stage after defeats to Morocco and Brazil, failing to escape a group containing those two sides plus Haiti. The announcement came exactly a month after Clarke signed a new four-year contract that would have taken him through Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup.
“Steve Clarke quit as Scotland head coach after World Cup group exit, calling it an 'easy decision' he had long planned.”
“What I wanted to make sure was that when I felt it was time to step away, it was time to step away,” Clarke said in a video released by the Scottish Football Association after he declined a BBC interview. “Signing the contract before [the World Cup] was a case of trying to give a little bit of comfort to the players knowing that we could continue the journey. I always had in my head that, if we didn’t come out of the group, which is something that we’ve tried to do across three tournaments now, I always had in my head that if that didn’t happen then it was probably the right time to step away. Obviously if we’d managed to get that extra point and got out of the group then I’d probably have stayed on and tried to do another tournament.”
Asked if it was an easy decision, Clarke said: “In some respects it was easy because I already had in my head what I wanted to achieve as a head coach. I’d also ticked all the boxes. I wanted to go to a major tournament with my country. I did that with the Euros. The first Euros [in 2021] was a little bit not the Euros because it was Covid affected. The second Euros was great. The tournament didn’t go as we wanted, but getting to Germany was fantastic. My lifelong ambition was to do a World Cup with my country. I’ve done that, so not a bad time to step aside.”
He described telling his players as an emotional moment: “I think seven or eight of them have been with me from the start, right the way through. It was very important to me…”
The Scottish FA has said “nothing is off the table” in its search for Clarke’s successor, as the Tartan Army’s wait for a maiden knockout berth goes on.