Former Rangers star Lee McCulloch has rubbished the “myth” of players not wanting to represent Scotland after nine withdrawals from Alex McLeish’s squad for the current international break.
One of the players forced out of the action was Celtic left-back Kieran Tierney, who will miss Tuesday’s Nations League clash against Israel with a leg injury.
As so many players have dropped out of McLeish’s squad, a lot has been said about the willingness of Scottish players to represent their country.
However ex-Ger McCulloch isn’t having it and has simply suggested that it is down to rotten luck with injuries.
“Alex didn’t have his problems to seek after nine players were unavailable for the game but I don’t believe for a second that any one of them have called off because they are not interested. That is a myth, for me,” he said on the Glasgow Evening Times website.
“There are genuine injuries there. Kieran Tierney will be gutted to miss out, John McGinn will be gutted to miss out.”
OPINION
McCulloch is right about Tierney and McGinn. They are two class young players in very good form so they would surely want to play for Scotland if they could. The issue is that both of them have played a lot of football this season. Across all competitions this term, Tierney has made 26 appearances. Since joining Aston Villa in the summer, McGinn has played 19 times in total. A lot of those games sees the likes of Tierney and McGinn playing two times a week and that makes them much more susceptible to injury. They likely have all kinds of small knocks throughout the season but are told to play through them at club level. But when it’s an international break, clubs and players are less likely to take a risk. Scotland cannot be relegated from their Nations League group now but a win against Israel will see them promoted to the same level as Germany, Croatia and Wales will be playing next time around. Are those big enough games for players to risk playing injured when the next Nations League starts? No one really cares about playing Israel and Albania, do they?