13 June – Scotland labour to a 1-0 victory over Haiti at the Boston Stadium – just their fifth World Cup win. “My boys are all right,” was his response as some questioned the performance.<\/p>\n
Despite that, it was a Scotland win on the major stage, and there was a wave of relief that they didn’t slip up – heightened more by the performances of Cape Verde and DR Congo.<\/p>\n
15 June – During a regular in-camp media conference, Naismith joked that Clarke was “doing cartwheels at breakfast” after the Haiti win.<\/p>\n
The former forward put a real emphasis on the pre-tournament preparations and the head coach’s desire to enjoy this edition.<\/p>\n
19 June – Scotland concede within the first two minutes of their match with Morocco and despite improving in the second half, they taste defeat. Afterwards Clarke receives some criticism after a tense off-pitch interview saying: “I don’t even know why we do these interviews.”<\/p>\n
23 June – Speaking before the Brazil match, Clarke joked of returning to the Azteca Stadium in the last 32 – a place where he once scored as a player at the World Youth Championships in 1983. <\/p>\n
“If we have to go to Mexico to play Mexico, we’ll be happy because it will mean we qualified. We’ll be very happy to have the chance to go.”<\/p>\n
24 June – Scotland crash to a 3-0 defeat against Brazil in Miami leaving their chance of reaching the knockout stages for the first time in tatters. <\/p>\n
Post-match Clarke comes under more scrutiny for his approach in his post-match interviews. After another short, tense exchange where he appears to walk off, he tells the media later, “for sure we are going home”.<\/p>\n
Such negativity floors the fanbase, when the Scots still had a 42% chance of creating history.<\/p>\n
25-26 June: As that percentage plummets, so does the access doors to the squad. Nobody speaks to the media while the nation is in limbo.<\/p>\n
27\/28 June – Just before midnight in the UK, Scotland’s fate is sealed as Croatia beat Ghana to confirm their exit from the tournament as one of the lowest-ranked third-place teams. <\/p>\n
Thirty-two minutes later, it is announced Clarke has resigned as Scotland head coach penning a 1,000-word letter to the nation saying his overwhelming emotion was “pride, closely followed by satisfaction” and witnessing “the reconnection of our national team and fans”.<\/p>\n
His departure was only announced to the squad 10 minutes beforehand, with Clarke sharing the shocking news to those he credited most in his heartfelt cheerio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"13 June – Scotland labour to a 1-0 victory over Haiti at the Boston Stadium – just their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-765259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}