‘Emotional’ Craig Gordon and John Souttar left out of Scotland’s Euro 2024 squad

Steve Clarke admits he had to have emotional conversations when leaving Craig Gordon and John Souttar out of Scotland’s Euro 2024 squad.

Gordon became the country’s oldest international when the 41-year-old goalkeeper came on during the final European Championship warm-up against Finland with the home side leading 2-0 at Hampden Park.

However, in his 75th appearance for Scotland, the Hearts keeper let in two goals – the second a penalty he conceded himself when he was penalised for a challenge on Tomas Galvez despite appearing to touch the ball first.

Souttar was one of two players absent from Clarke’s matchday squad and he too will miss out as the Scotland boss culled his squad to 26 ahead of the opener against host country Germany next Friday.

“It was a really tough decision to leave Craig out,” said Clarke, who took “no risk” with Scott McTominay or Che Adams who did not appear against Finland.

“When you think of the injury he had come back from, I just thought over the period of time that he had been back and hadn’t become the number one at Hearts again – he only had seven games since December 2022, a long time.

“Obviously you had the dynamic of the squad, the three goalkeepers had been involved in every qualification.

“It was a really tough conversation with Craig, it was quite emotional to be honest – for both of us.

“But the mark of the man is he was here tonight. At the end of the conversation I said ‘I understand if you don’t like me and don’t want to do this, but I would like to give you the 75th cap tomorrow in front of a good crowd’.

“I could have done it against Gibraltar (on Monday), but I wanted to do it here at Hampden and the mark of the man, an hour later he was down having dinner with the lads. A great