STEVE CLARKE has vowed his Scotland stars will show nerves of steel in tonight’s winner-takes-all World Cup showdown.
The whole nation will be gripped by the do-or-die clash with Group C rivals Denmark at Hampden.
But Clarke insists his ‘legends’ can cope with the pressure they’re under to win and qualify for the first time since 1998.
He said: “The players have a job to do. If they’re not nervous or excited by the challenge ahead, they wouldn’t be at this level. They understand the magnitude of the game.
“But they just have to make sure they are focused on how we want to play it.
“They have to be focused on what Denmark might do too. That’s our job as a coaching staff.
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“And then, when they cross the white line, they have to go out and play.
“If they play like they can, I believe they are good enough to get the result we need.
“If you look at what we’ve achieved over the last six and a half years, a lot of these players are already legends.
“They are very high in the ranking of what we’ve done as a country.”
Injured Billy Gilmour is out. But Clarke insists the rest of his squad are ready to grab the chance of a lifetime after reaching back-to-back Euros.
He added: “The players have shown they know how to qualify for tournaments. So let’s qualify for another one.
“They haven’t hit the levels I expected from them over the last few games, but we’re there.
“We have the points to make sure this is the cup final we all wanted. In football, sometimes things don’t go your way.
“I mentioned after the October camp when everybody was pretty disappointed we hadn’t played as well as we wanted to play, that the most important thing in the qualifying campaign is points. We have the points.
“The game in Greece, if you compare it to the Hampden match, was probably a better performance and a lesser result.
“The players understand. They know they will have to play as well as they can against a good Denmark side to get the result.”
The Danes, who have a number of players toiling with illness since the weekend, blew the chance to qualify automatically by drawing with Belarus.
But Clarke added: “I’m not expecting their heads to be down.
“They still have the opportunity to go through as group winners so they will come here determined to make amends for their slip-up the other night.
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“But we’re determined to make sure it’s another difficult night for them and a great night for us.
“We always felt when the draw was made that if we got it down to the final game here, that would be an achievement because we’d have finished above our seeding. But we want to go one step further and finish top of the group.”
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