'I feel the pressure' - Clarke's World Cup stress

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke has conceded he "feels the pressure" to get the nation to their first World Cup finals in 28 years.

Under Clarke's guidance the Scots have reached two European Championships, but have failed to emulate the achievement of Craig Brown's group in 1998.

The country's latest qualification campaign, this time for next summer's finals in the United States, Canada and Mexico, commences away to formidable Denmark on 5 September.

"I feel the pressure," the stoic and normally unshakable Clarke told BBC Sport.

"I think there is a pressure because we do want to get there, the whole country wants to get there, and obviously as a head coach a little bit of that comes back on me.

"But I'm looking forward to it."

The Scotland boss was speaking to Match of the Day's Kelly Cates as he prepares for what potentially could be his last campaign.

The 61-year-old, who is due to name his squad next week, has previously said he is 75% sure his time in charge of his country will come to a close after this World Cup campaign ends.

It is a journey which started just over six years ago, with Scotland having not qualified for a major finals since that French sojourn under Brown.

A summer fling has been flung twice at the Euros, albeit with the Scots falling flat in their attempts to make it out of a group for the first time.

In World Cup qualifying, a glorious chance to make it to Qatar was passed up in a home play-off to Ukraine.

But the former Kilmarnock manager, who is in line to become Scotland's longest-serving boss, says the group is determined to put that right, albeit while facing a qualifying group which also contains Greece and Belarus.

"I knew it was coming up, I didn't know it was that close," he said of the record.

"If I get there then we'll probably talk about it then, but the most important thing is not me becoming the most capped Scotland manager or whatever, the most important thing is for the team to get to America next year.

"We've got a fantastic group of players. They're all determined to make up for what we feel was a missed chance to go to Qatar in 2022 and hopefully we can do it."

Clarke added: "I think the squad of players that I've worked with, we've shown that we have the capacity to qualify for major tournaments. Even the last World Cup, the actual group stage of the qualification was good.

"I think we finished with 23 points behind Denmark. Denmark finished with 27. We had a great campaign. We got to the play-offs and just let ourselves down on the night against Ukraine in what was pretty unusual circumstances.

"We'd had to wait from March to June to play the game. There was obviously the war which had just started in Ukraine. It was a difficult night and we didn't play as we can play.

"The players that I've got in the squad that were involved in that one are determined to put it right this time."

The Steve Clarke Interview with Kelly Cates will be available to watch on iPlayer from Friday, 22 August.