Steve Clarke protecting his sanity from Scotland critics as insight offered into Brazil thinking

Some angry squawking breaks the spell. It’s a sound the Scotland manager might recognise if he were a consumer of social media, which he avowedly is not.

“Social media? What’s that? I don’t look at that, I really don’t look at it,” he says. “If I look at that then I could be affected a little bit, and I value my mental health. It’s important I stay reasonably sane.”

The commotion is from a pair of angry birds fighting by a fence. Their argument probably isn’t related to how Scotland should line up against Brazil in Miami tomorrow, but the vibes are similar to those who argue Clarke must take the brakes off and those who demand a more defensive approach, since one point is almost certainly enough to secure a passage to the second stage. Defeat by two or fewer goals should also be sufficient. Feathers have been ruffled to the extent that Clarke is meeting written journalists for an extended explanation of how he views his responsibilities.

“If I go gung-ho in attack and get beat 4-0 you’ll hang me from that bird’s nest up there!” he contends, probably reasonably. “Listen, it’s one of those things. Because we’ve done what we haven’t done before, and got points from the first game which gives you much better platform for the rest of the group stage, we know that a narrow defeat would maybe help us. But there’s no guarantee. We don’t go into this game thinking, ‘Let’s get a narrow defeat'. We go into it thinking, ‘Can we beat Brazil?’’

“It’s a tough ask but can we beat Brazil?” he continues. “We have to ask that question. And we have to ask that question of Brazil. If we go with that mindset and that mentality then maybe we don’t get the win but we get the draw. Then the draw almost certainly guarantees us a place.

“Me being me and being pessimistic, maybe it won’t and we’ll still be a case of counting on goals. But I think we’re at the stage where four points would be enough for us and that’s the mentality we have to have.

“I don’t think we get the draw if we just sit in to defend. I know that’s how you guys think that’s how we set out to play against Hungary in the last tournament, but it wasn’t. We spoke more about attacking and trying to create problems in the last game. But by the time we reached the third game at Euro 2024 I think my key players were empty.”

Germany was an ultimately unhappy experience. One of Clarke’s stated main targets this time around is to enjoy the tournament. Has that been possible so far, given the high stakes? He didn’t look like he was enjoying himself in short “super flash” interview moments after the final whistle had sounded against Morocco.

“I'm loving it!” he says. "I was as crabbit yesterday, because we lost. That's just me. That's just the way I deal with things.

“You need 48 hours just to decompress, just to compute,” he adds. “I slept for about four hours before the game, I slept about three hours after the game. Last night, I slept for ten hours, and I woke up this morning and I thought: ‘Bring it on, let's go.’”