Scott McTominay wants to be part of 'most successful Scotland team in history'

Scott McTominay is adamant that the current Scotland squad are aiming to be the most successful in the nation’s history.

Steve Clarke’s men have only won one of their last 16 games and are currently on a run of eight games without a victory going back to a 2-0 friendly win over Gibraltar five months ago.

But they drew 0-0 with Portugal in their last game that ended a run of four consecutive defeats and McTominay is confident that they can now kick on and get back to winning ways.

The Napoli midfielder, who has been earning rave reviews after a series of impressive performances since making the move to Italy’s Serie A from English Premier League giants Manchester United, has been part of a squad that qualified for back-to-back European Championships after a 24-year wait for a major championships appearance.

And with the World Cup in 2026 on the horizon, he believes they can now aim to become the most successful Scotland side of all time by firstly qualifying for the tournament that will be held across North America and then reaching the knockout stages for the first time in history.

Speaking on Thursday as the national team prepare to host Croatia at Hampden in their penultimate Nations League game, he said: “Every time you play for Scotland you want to do your absolute best, we’ve had some disappointing results and we all know that, but the way we have been playing I think is pretty good it’s just the results have been pretty short of what we would’ve wanted.

“Football isn’t always going to be sunshine and rainbows, sometimes you will have to ride the waves and not get too emotional and just try to keep stable and get to where we want to as a group.

“We firmly trust in the manager and the coaching staff to be the ones to push us in the right direction going forward because all the ideas they give us are really good and the stuff we do in training is always really good as well so it’s only a matter of time before the wins start coming.

“We are learning all the time, getting to two major tournaments was amazing and everyone was happy about that, but the players in the dressing room are saying we want to kick on further, we want to get out the groups and keep progressing as a team.

“We want to raise our profile and get people confident that we are capable of beating the pot one teams and I think we have more than enough quality in our squad to do that.

“There’s always a point to prove, there’s always time to improve and for us that’s the way we need to be as a group, you can never settle for the things that are in the past.

“We want to keep moving forward and we want to be the most successful Scottish team in history.”

McTominay was, at times unfairly, criticised by the Manchester United support during his time at Old Trafford but a recent move to Italy, when he became the most expensive Scotland player of all time, seems to have revitalised the player who has already become a fan’s favourite in Naples.

However, he insists his attitude towards performing at his best for Scotland will remain no matter where he plays his club football.

He said: “I always give my best for Scotland no matter where I am playing at club level, the dedication and professionalism that I have tried to keep up throughout my career to give me the best platform to play as well as I possibly can and that’s all I focus on.”