Scotland's much-anticipated return to the World Cup after a 28-year absence has been immediately overshadowed by a war of words with Norway. Steve Clarke and his team were branded 'unprofessional', 'embarrassing' and 'weak' by the Norwegians after the cancellation of a training game planned for Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Norwegian Outrage
Stale Solbakken, Norway's head coach, reacted furiously to the cancellation. 'It was surprising to me and it is unprofessional of Scotland,' he said. 'It is unprofessional that the coach has not called me, that they use the team manager and call and say it after we have finished training. I don't think the injuries they're blaming came from the last training session. That's not the case. It's disappointing. It's unprofessional. But we have to live with that.'
The Scottish FA expressed surprise at the Norwegian stance, pointing out that Clarke and Solbakken had never discussed the game directly. Instead, the match was organised between team administrators. Norway's team manager, Brede Hangeland, was equally irked. 'We have been working on that match for many months. It is embarrassing to cancel it a couple of days before. We can't do anything about it, we just have to forget about it and make the best of it. But there has been a lot of organisation, agreements and gentlemen's agreements and then suddenly they don't want to. I think that was weak, so to speak.'
Scotland's Defence
As the story escalated, a batch of Norwegian journalists made an impromptu visit to John McGinn's scheduled press conference on Monday afternoon. Unsurprisingly, the Aston Villa midfielder backed the decision not to play the game. 'I would say 75% of the squad didn't see it [the Norwegian comments]. I did see it. Our job is to look after Scotland. Norway's job is to look after Norway. If they have done their research, we lost a very important part of the squad very close to this camp and that had a huge impact on everyone. We didn't want to lose another. We have had a few niggles, not everybody has been training. So I think it is a professional way of handling things, to look after No 1. I'm sure every single country would do the exact same.'
McGinn added: 'Norway will be angry because they have their own plans, they probably set up for that game. But if Norway lost Erling Haaland or Martin Odegaard in one of the games leading up to the tournament, they would cancel the game as well.'
Clarke's Perspective
Clarke had been similarly nonplussed, albeit his sentiment was offered before Norway took aim. 'It was just going to be a training game for an hour at our training ground. We picked up one or two niggles last week and decided it wasn't worth the risk.' The Scottish FA issued a statement criticising Norway for publicising the scenario. 'The behind-closed-doors training game was organised and arranged between the respective team managers – not the head coaches – and this was the same process we followed when we regrettably had to cancel on Saturday. We have had some injuries during our previous friendlies and when it became apparent that a training game would bring greater risk than potential preparatory reward, we alerted the Norway team manager as soon as possible. We believe this was the right and consistent process. The game was also due to be behind closed doors and not announced publicly so we were surprised when news of the game broke via Norwegian media.'
Injury Concerns
Alongside Billy Gilmour missing out completely due to an injury sustained against Curacao, Scotland's Scott McKenna and Nathan Patterson have seen training minutes managed due to minor knocks. Ross Stewart had a small knee problem before the tournament but appeared as a Scotland substitute during the 4-0 win over Bolivia on Saturday. Norway drew 1-1 with Morocco a day later.
