Scotland's Morgan had 20-25% chance of hip surgery return

Scotland forward Lewis Morgan has revealed that he was given a "20-25%" chance of being able to return to his previous levels following major hip surgery last year.

The New York Red Bulls attacker was a late call up for the provisional Euro 2024 squad and made it into the final pool of 26.

And the former Celtic, Inter Miami and St Mirren forward says the "fear" of not recovering from September's operation was motivating.

"I started to pick up a lot of hip strains, so we knew surgery was in the background, but I wanted to give everything I could to avoid it," the 27-year-old said.

"I re-injured myself three, four, maybe five times, and each time the severity got worse and it culminated in a really bad psoas tear, which is supposedly unheard of.

"I had the surgery, which involved almost a complete reshaping of my hip. It was quite intense.

"As soon as the surgery was over, all the pain that I'd had was almost gone and then it was just about recovering and getting back.

"They were giving me around an 80-85% chance of returning to play full stop and then returning to performance level was maybe like 20 or 25%.

"Maybe that fear sort of drove me on in the rehab process to make sure that I didn't skip any corners and I give myself the best chance."

And he added: "It's quite surreal to think, 'oh now I'm back playing and I'm performing at a good level'."

Indeed, Morgan ended a six-year international absence as a substitute in Friday's 2-2 home draw with Finland and can now turned his attention to facing Germany in Scotland's Euro 2024 opener.

He thinks Scotland can "absolutely" surprise the hosts on Friday.

"Absolutely, stranger things have happened in football," Morgan said.

"We've got a really, really talented squad here, a good group of players playing at the highest level in world football.

"There's no reason why we can't go there and get something, but we can only do that if we give the best version of ourselves and stick to the game plan."