John McGinn tackles Scotland jeers head on and tells gung-ho merchants the truth

The Aston Villa captain is a realistic contender for the 100-cap club as he hunts down Kenny Dalglish and his current skipper, Andy Robertson. Dalglish is the only member of this exclusive band to date. Robertson, who will move into outright second place on the appearances list if he wins his 92nd cap against Ivory Coast on Tuesday, is surely destined to join the Liverpool legend very shortly.

McGinn is on 84 caps currently and 20 goals, which is just 10 behind the joint record shared by Dalglish and Denis Law. It’s ten years almost to the day since McGinn made his debut in a 1-0 friendly win over Denmark.

“I’d be lying if I thought that I would get 84, 85 caps,” he said. “One was enough, and the first one was a huge, huge surprise. So, at that time did I envisage becoming such an important member of the squad? Absolutely not. But it fills me with immense pride, and I still feel I’ve got a lot left to offer.”

The next frontier is qualifying out of the group at this summer’s World Cup. “When it starts to get close to 100 you have your eye on it,” he admitted. “You’d be lying if you said otherwise. But the priority both for me and Robbo, as he touched on last week, is to try and get this country through the group stage and achieve something special.

“If that meant that that was my last three or four caps for the country, that would make me much happier than playing 20, 25 more with poor results. So we’re obviously determined to keep carrying on, and I’m determined to do that personally. I’ve said before, I’ll play until I’m told I’m not good enough. I’ve always said that because I know what it feels like to be at the low levels, to try and climb your way up. It’s not easy and you can’t take it for granted.”

McGinn has seen both bad and good times. A 4-0 home friendly defeat against Belgium early in his international career sticks in his mind. It helps put losing narrowly 1-0 to Japan into perspective, as Scotland did on Saturday night before then being booed off for what many perceived as an unambitious performance. McGinn explained the tricky balancing act.

“We can go gung-ho, we can fling bodies forward and get embarrassed,” he said. “If that was the case we would be proper booed. The onus is on us to get bums off seats and try and take the game to teams, but we’ve also got to be cautious. And I think over the years, whether some people enjoy watching it or not, it’s what’s got us to where we are now and what’s made us successful.

“I’ve experienced much worse boos than that during friendlies as a Scotland player. I remember Belgium at home and other matches, and the booing was a lot more deserved than that.”