{"id":5673,"date":"2026-06-26T14:50:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5673"},"modified":"2026-06-26T14:50:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T14:50:54","slug":"2026-world-cup-why-scotlands-attacking-numbers-highlight-repeated-failings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5673","title":{"rendered":"2026 World Cup: Why Scotland&#8217;s attacking numbers highlight repeated failings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Much of the criticism that stemmed from Scotland&#8217;s meek Euro 2024 showings arose from Clarke&#8217;s reluctance to move away from a back-five formation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This summer, that has not been the case. The Scotland boss has used three different set-ups across three different games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A 4-4-2 shape that helped the Scots score eight goals across two encouraging World Cup warm-up fixtures against 10-man Curacao and Bolivia was deployed in the nervy win over the Haitians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Slight variations of a 4-2-3-1 were used against both Morocco and Brazil, with full-back Kieran Tierney on the left of midfield against the former and a more attack-minded system, with Ben Gannon-Doak on the wing instead, against the Brazilians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Morocco aside, the front-footed look of the Scotland XIs on paper against Haiti and Brazil played into the self-proclaimed idea that Clarke had travelled to the US as a new man with fresh ideas. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, there were repeated concerns about gameplans and the execution of them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scotland were clinging on for much of the 1-0 victory over Haiti and many feared that a single-goal win would potentially be damaging for their hopes of progression. It looks set to play a part in what now feels like an inevitable early exit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much of the criticism that stemmed from Scotland&#8217;s meek Euro 2024 showings arose from Clarke&#8217;s reluctance to move away from&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}