John McGinn insists he and his Scotland teammates will allow the fans to do the talking about Germany.
Scotland took a huge step towards qualification for Euro 2024 last night. Steve Clarke’s side marched to an easy 3-0 win thanks to goals from Scott McTominay, Ryan Porteous and McGinn.
Their place in Germany next summer could be automatically sealed on Tuesday night should other results in their qualifying group go favourably. Scotland will take on England in an international friendly while those matches are ongoing.
McGinn embodied Clarke’s mantra of focussing on the next game, the next job at hand when speaking post-match. However, that hasn’t stopped the Aston Villa captain from telling the fans to keep on dreaming.
“It was a really tough first half actually even although we were 3-0 up,” he said. “Cyprus are always a really difficult opponent, when we played here last time we found it a lot tougher.
“But it was a really important win. We’ve tried to keep a lid on the sort of reactions and the celebrations for tonight because we know we’re close, but we’re not quite there yet.
“We need to be responsible and keep our mature heads on. Tonight’s a huge win, five wins from five. The focus for us is that, that’s what the manager has drilled into us. I think we’ve created history there.
“Mathematically we’re probably only one or two points away. The job could be sealed on Tuesday, but we’ve got a really exciting game to keep our minds off that. And what a game it is. If we manage to qualify during that night then that would be even more special.
“We’re not quite there yet. Only our wee country could mess it up from here. So, we need to stay calm as much as possible.
“We’ll let the fans get carried away, we’ll let them drink Cyprus dry. We’ll go back to have our Summer Fruits, and we’ll prepare for Tuesday.”
READ MORE: Scotland players rated after comfortable win over Cyprus
McTominay is the top scorer across the entirety of the qualification campaign as things stand with six goals from five games. McGinn set the Manchester United outcast up for the first, and he later returned the favour.
McGinn thinks he knows the midfielder’s scoring secret. He told Viaplay: “I think it’s the V he’s sporting at the back of his head. He’s going for the Fernando Torres. He’s got the striker’s haircut.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel