Day one at Scotland HQ, east of uptown Charlotte, and there’s a bunfight brewing – or to be more accurate, angry Norwegians are taking potshots at Steve Clarke, who, we can only surmise, couldn’t care less what the Norwegians think.
Stale Solbakken, the Norway head coach, and Brede Hangeland, the team manager, have let fly in the media about a training game between the reserve players from the two countries that Clarke cancelled.
Who knew that the ditching of a meaningless bounce match could spark such fury.
“Unprofessional,” trumpeted Solbakken of his Scottish counterpart. “Embarrassing” and “weak” whinged Hangeland.
Just before the Scotland news conference at their palatial Charlotte base camp, three Norwegian reporters fetched up in search of Scottish retaliatory thunder.
What they got was a cool response from John McGinn, not just super with the ball at his feet but also pretty nifty with a microphone in front of his face.
“I would say 75% of the [Scotland] squad haven’t seen it,” he said of the Norwegian anger, smiling as he spoke.
“I did see it. Our job is to look after Scotland. Norway’s job is to look after Norway. And if they’ve done their research, we lost a very important part of the squad [in Billy Gilmour] very, very close to this camp.
“It had a huge impact on everyone. We didn’t want to lose another. We had a few niggles, not everyone’s been training.
“So I think it’s a professional way of handling things, to be perfectly honest, and look after number one. I’m sure every single country will be doing the exact same.
“If Norway lost Erling Haaland or Martin Odegaard in one of the games leading up to Saturday, they would cancel the game as well.”
