Euro 2024: Andy Robertson urges Scotland to play without fear

COLOGNE – Scotland captain Andy Robertson has called on his team to play without fear in their key Euro 2024 match against Switzerland on Wednesday evening, saying it is time for the team to deliver results in front of their thousands of fans who have traveled to Germany.

Scotland lost 5-1 to Germany last Friday in the opening match of the 2024 European Championship. The margin of defeat means that Scotland urgently need to get a result against Switzerland in Cologne on Wednesday if they want to progress to the knockout stages. But it promises to be a tough task given how well Switzerland played in their 3-1 win over Hungary on Saturday.

Robertson said he allowed the team to compartmentalize their heavy defeat on Saturday, but told them to park their anger into the evening and focus on Switzerland.

The Liverpool defender says the Swiss are a ‘template’ for what Scotland want to be at major tournaments, but he is confident his team can deliver if they can capitalize on the same winning mentality that saw them through a tough qualifying group with Spain have come. and Norway.

“You saw a team (in qualifying) that was full of belief and ready to fight for each other and ready to go for every ball and maybe on Friday we played a little bit with fear, which we didn’t want,” Robertson said.

He added: “We have to be back at our best to try to get something out of Switzerland. And when we do that, we believe that we can try to get a result, but they will also be full of faith, full of conviction. confidence, and rightly so, after what they did on Saturday.

“But we have to show what we stand for. We have to show what Scotland stand for and if we do that we believe we can hopefully cause them problems and we can get a little further up the pitch and cause problems in the sixteen meter area.” those kind of things.

“But it won’t be easy. They are a really good team and that’s why we’re going for it. We’re confident that we can get a result, but we’re also full of praise for Switzerland. But like I said, maybe it came There will be a little bit of fear on Friday and we will try to make sure that doesn’t happen tomorrow.”

Scotland have incredible support in Germany, with an estimated 200,000 fans traveling to Euro 2024 to support Steve Clarke’s side. Robertson believes Scotland let the fans down with their performance on Friday night and says he is keen to put that right.

“It’s easy to talk about a football match before or after the game, whatever you want, but it’s not so easy to go out and that’s what we need to focus on. We need action.”

“Of course there was a lot of talk after the game as well. A lot of people were critical and a lot of people from outside probably couldn’t wait to get into it a little bit. Yeah, so that’s fine for them. They get paid to do that and that we respect, but now we have to take action, we have to be on the field and we have to do much better on the field and that is what we are focused on.

“There was maybe a bit of a hype around us in our own country and people were excited and we think that’s great and we hope they’re excited again tomorrow, but we’ve got to try and give them something to shout about because of the support the one we had on Friday was right up there and we let them down.

“We didn’t give them much to cheer about, but even then they still supported us until the end and we really appreciate that. Come tomorrow and the next game, hopefully we’ll give them a little more to cheer about.”

Clarke said Scotland have a fully fit squad to choose from, with only Ryan Porteous absent due to the suspension he received for the red card against Germany.