Former Celtic ace convinced he's better than Liverpool superstar by international boss

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke says he had to play to Kieran Tierney's ego in order to get the former Celtic left-back into left-centre-back.

Clarke has two of the best left-back's in world football at his disposal in Arsenal man Tierney and Liverpool superstar Andy Robertson, who is his captain.

Tierney has moved to the left of his 3-5-2 formation while Clarke keeps Robertson in a position more natural to him. This only happened though after Clarke's chat with the Muirhouse star who left Celtic for Arsenal in 2019.

Soul-searching was needed after a 4-0 thumping in Russia in October 2019 and Clarke turned to the Gunners ace for a solution.

He told the High Performance Podcast: “Defensively we weren’t great and needed a change. I phoned my coaches and said ‘we can’t go with a back four, I want to go with a back three’.

“I had never coached a back three in my life so it was a challenge for me and my coaches. We had two of the best left-backs in world football, Tierney and Robertson, and had to figure out how to get them in the team.

“My idea was that Tierney could play centre-back and I had this mad idea that Scott McTominay could play as one of the others.

“I had a really good conversation with Tierney to tell him he was going to be the best left-sided centre-back that Scotland had ever had.

“A myth had built up around Kieran that he didn’t want to come and play with the national team, which wasn’t correct. But I think he always felt that he was a better left-back than Andy Robertson.

"Every player thinks they’re better than the immediate competition and if you compare them, there isn’t a cigarette paper between them.

"I had to persuade Kieran that he was better than Andy and that’s why I trusted him to play left