Two summers ago, Scotland’s Euros opener proved to be one of their biggest letdowns under Clarke – a 5-1 loss to hosts Germany.
“We have to remember how bad that felt,” the head coach says.
Clarke believes that crushing defeat put Scotland “on the back foot” for the remainder of their tournament, which again ended at the group stage.
“This time, we have to make sure we start on the front foot,” he insists.
On the evidence of the Scots’ warm-up displays, there are signs they can achieve that against a similarly-ranked nation this weekend.
The recent adoption of an aggressive 4-4-2 shape with two strikers playing centrally and direct winger Ben Doak operating off the right feeds into the idea of a “different Steve Clarke”, although he suggested he has been unfairly “tagged with a label”.
“I think I’ve shown consistently throughout my time that I’m prepared to try something different,” says Clarke, who feels he has his best depth across a Scotland squad.
“Going into this tournament, the something different was to think about maybe playing 4-4-2 to see how it worked.
“What people don’t understand is when you’re at a club you can work on a system for a long period of time and have a lot of training sessions on it. When you’re in an international camp you don’t have that.”
