Steve Clarke sidesteps Erling Haaland hype train as Scotland boss reminds confident Norway 'it's a team game'

Steve Clarke played down the threat posed by Erling Haaland on Saturday - reminding his players it's a "team" game and not about one individual.

Much has been made of Haaland's return to the Norway setup after missing their autumn internationals due to injury and he's been tipped to fire them to a big win in Oslo over the Scots. He comes off the back of a scarcely believable season for Man City where he scored 52 goals and fired them to a Treble.

Couple that with the potent threat posed by Arsenal's Martin Odegaard and it's easy to see why the feeling coming out of the Norway camp is confident as they look to beat Scotland and eat up some ground in the tussle to qualify for Euro 2024. But Clarke has been quick to remind both sets of players that regardless of any individual talent, it will be the best team that wins.

He said: "As we always do, we concentrate on ourselves. We prepare properly for the game, we respect our opponents. We play Norway the team, and hopefully Scotland the team are a little bit better on the night."

Scotland go into the game on the back of beating Group A favourites Spain 2-0 at Hampden in March to make it a perfect start to the campaign, while Norway sit on one point from their two matches. Asked if his Scotland side now expect to win these types of games, Clarke said:

"I think we should come with confidence. Obviously we had a good March and we have had a good run of wins in competitive fixtures. But we know we are coming to a difficult place. We always respect our opponents, we try and play as well as we can, and hopefully we can add to the points tally.

"It's a different challenge, it's an away game. Norway are a different team from Spain, they play a different way. "They put you under a