As an Englishman who played for Scotland, Stuart McCall acknowledges he perhaps is not best placed to talk about players who have turned their backs on their country.
However, with Scotland sitting rock bottom of their World Cup qualifying group ahead of Friday night’s daunting trip to Croatia and another major tournament now out of reach, the Scotland coach admits the country he has poured his heart and soul into for many years cannot afford to lose any more home-grown stars to other nations.
McCall will travel to Zagreb with the Scotland set-up this week more in hope than expectation of Gordon Strachan’s men causing an upset. However, the Motherwell boss hopes the injection of young talent can only be a good thing for the nation’s future prospects.
“I’m the last person to speak being English playing for Scotland, but it irks me when I see the likes of Aiden McGeady and James McCarthy playing for the Republic of Ireland,” he explained.
“Any possible top player we can get, we’ve got to try to make sure that we get them and that’s going down to 15, 16, 17-year-olds because we don’t have a vast pool to choose from. Every little bit helps.
“I think I was 24 when I came in and every training session you feel more part of it. For all the young ones, this little part the run-up to the game is an important part and we want the game to be a positive experience for them.
“There’s only the group here who can make it a positive experience. Training has been bright, the players that are here all want to be here and it should always be an honour to represent your country.
“It was always a great honour to represent your country, whenever, wherever. So there’s got to be a stage in the future that we do start improving and start building.
“You clutch at straws but I even look back to the Welsh game here and there’s no doubt in the first 30 minutes we were being outplayed and we were terrible.
“That’s probably as bad a team that we’ve all ever been in charge of and we were all looking at each other thinking: ‘How come we just can’t pass a ball?’.
“But once we got over that, three minutes in the game killed us. You can’t keep looking back but that was a body blow and I think we’ve got to start putting pieces together to form a platform and trying to rejig things.
“I’ve watched under-21s over the last two years join the group and they’ll be better with the ones that we’ve got, being about the place and feeling part of it and that’s got to be a positive thing.
“We’ve got talented boys there Gary Mackay-Steven, Stuart Armstrong, Leigh Griffiths, Tony Watt so we’ve got to look to the positives there and hopefully come away with something on Friday that gives everyone a little lift.”
With Scotland down and out in terms of World Cup qualification, Friday’s game away to Croatia is being seen as potentially the start of a new chapter for the national team.