Scotland are staring at a third-place finish in Group B1 of the Nations League, an outcome that will have repercussions for their seeding in Euro 2028 qualifying. More striking than the league position, though, is the standard of performance across Sébastien Pocognoli’s first four games as manager. There has been no new-manager bounce.
The sequence has been poor. Scotland were dismal for a half in Slovenia before a decent but scoreless recovery. They capitulated after an early sending off against Switzerland, failing to register a shot on target in a meek 3-0 defeat. A 2-0 win away to North Macedonia — as poor an international team as Scotland have faced in recent times — merited little more than a shrug. Pocognoli’s side then rounded off the extended window by being played off the Hampden Park pitch by Slovenia, a performance with no redeeming qualities. Andy Robertson, the captain, strikingly questioned the attitude of his teammates.
Pocognoli was given only a two-year contract, an odd decision given the pedestal on which the Scottish Football Association placed him when he was hired in August. Host-nation status is still likely to secure Scotland a place at the next European Championship, but the country cannot arrive at the tournament under the cover of darkness. The alarming nature of the Slovenia display places a huge emphasis on November’s fixtures.
The bigger question is whether Scotland are suited to the way Pocognoli wants to play, and it does not look that way. He deploys a three-man backline as routine, with an emphasis on pressing high and wing-backs driving the attacking phases. Scotland do not have an obvious two-man central defensive pairing, so they struggle all the more when the number is increased by one: time and again they leave far too much space in behind, look woefully exposed, and are bypassed all too easily in midfield on the counterattack.
Success under Steve Clarke came from being well-drilled, compact and difficult to beat — unsexy, perhaps, but effective. Scotland allowed Slovenia to look as menacing as Morocco and Brazil, the top-quality opposition they faced at the World Cup. Switching to a back four in the closing stages against Slovenia left the players looking generally confused, a bad look for a manager who has insisted he is “flexible” in a tactical sense and who disputed having a touchline row with Robertson. The return of Scott McTominay for the next set of fixtures offers a sliver of hope, but it is not obvious where the Napoli midfielder fits — and the current setup will not maximise McTominay, John McGinn, Ryan Christie or Billy Gilmour.
There was an appetite for change after seven years of Clarke, even though his record — qualification for three of the last four major tournaments — was underappreciated. With the available talent dropping or ageing, the obvious move was towards a coach who had succeeded in tournament football with a similarly sized nation, and who would bring pragmatism and realism. Instead, Scottish FA officials spoke of a data-led search for Clarke’s successor and landed on a coach who had never managed in international football before.
The handling of Ben Gannon-Doak sharpens the dilemma. The 20-year-old is lightly raced at club level and looks unlikely at this point to make a first-team impact at Bournemouth. He has searing pace and a directness that scares defenders, offset by woeful decision-making. What is clear is that he cannot operate as a right wing-back for Scotland against credible opposition, and deploying him there also denies a start to Aaron Hickey, undeniably one of Scotland’s best players. Gannon-Doak is a winger, as are Josh McPake and Findlay Curtis, and Pocognoli’s first-choice method does not involve wingers. Something has to give.
The new structures around the national team add to the uncertainty. The Scottish FA now has Craig Mulholland as chief football officer and Graeme Mathie as head of strategy, operations and performance; Mathie was plucked from the Scottish second tier and Mulholland was present in the dressing room during the Nations League fixtures. The new Scotland Under-21 manager, Tony Docherty, fields teams in the same formation as Pocognoli and last took charge of a plummeting Ross County. Six of Scotland’s starters against Slovenia were 30 or older.
There were 34,000 at Hampden for Slovenia’s visit — hardly disastrous in the broader Nations League context, but almost 20,000 short of capacity, and evidence that the public are yet to buy into Pocognoli and the blue-sky vision sold by his employers. There is no question of the Scottish FA becoming anxious towards the manager; as was the case with Clarke, they seem beholden to him. If this goes wrong, however, there will be significant questions to be answered about a chosen direction of travel.