{"id":6065,"date":"2026-06-28T10:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=6065"},"modified":"2026-06-28T10:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:04:15","slug":"fifa-world-cup-steve-clarke-strong-scotland-legacy-but-exit-brings-sense-of-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=6065","title":{"rendered":"Fifa World Cup: Steve Clarke strong Scotland legacy but exit brings sense of relief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">For much of Saturday afternoon, the skies above Charlotte were a dirty shade of gray, the rain bucketing down, the wind blowing hard, thunder and lightning seen and heard every minute or so.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If Steve Clarke was looking out of his hotel room, that&#8217;s the biblical scene he would have taken in. In a sense, the ideal backdrop for a bombshell. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Within minutes of Scotland being officially dumped out of the World Cup, the news of the head coach&#8217;s departure dropped. Unlike the weather, there was no warning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The manner of his exit was typical of the man; low-key, no fuss, no interviews as yet, no need in his mind to explain his thoughts any more than he already has.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The length and detail in his valedictory statement suggests this was in the pipeline for a day or two but there&#8217;s no word on why he has taken this decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And why so abruptly? Why not get back home, take a break and think about it? Snap judgements and emotional reactions are not Clarke traits, so why has he done this now?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The players didn&#8217;t know this was coming and neither did many of the Scottish FA board. A month ago these same people announced, with some fanfare, that Clarke was staying for four more years. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For much of Saturday afternoon, the skies above Charlotte were a dirty shade of gray, the rain bucketing down, the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6065","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\/6065","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=6065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}