Scotland defend ‘right and consistent’ process over cancelled friendly
Scotland have insisted they followed the “right and consistent” process in cancelling their planned behind-closed-doors friendly with Norway after criticism from the country’s manager Stale Solbakken.
The game between the teams – who are both based in North Carolina for their World Cup campaigns – was planned for Monday but the Norwegian Football Federation announced on Sunday it had been called off because of injuries in the Scotland camp.
Solbakken had labelled Scotland as “unprofessional” over the late notice (see below), and the fact that Scotland’s team manager – not Clarke himself – had contacted them over the cancellation.
Midfielder John McGinn was asked about the comments on Monday and said: “Our job is to look after Scotland, Norway’s job is to look after Norway. If they’ve done their research, we lost a very important part of the squad very close to this camp.
“That had a huge impact on everyone. We didn’t want to lose another, we’ve had a few niggles and not everyone’s been training.
“Norway will be angry because they had their own plans, but if they lost Martin Odegaard or Erling Haaland they’d cancel the game too.”
In a separate statement, a Scottish FA spokesperson added: “The behind-closed-doors training game was organised and arranged between the respective team managers – not the head coaches – and this was the same process we followed when we regrettably had to cancel on Saturday.
“We have had some injuries during our previous friendlies and when it became apparent that a training game would bring greater risk than potential preparatory reward, we alerted the Norway team manager as soon as possible.
“We believe this was the right and consistent process. The game was also due to be behind closed doors and not announced publicly – so we were surprised when news of the game broke via Norwegian media.”
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