Former Hibs legend John McGinn says that qualifying for the World Cup would eclipse anything he’s ever achieved in the game.
In a wonderful career, McGinn won the League Cup with St Mirren, the Scottish Cup with Hibs and promotion with Aston Villa and the next two games against Greece, who sit third place in Group C, and Denmark, who top the group will determine whether his dreams of playing in the World Cup will come true.
Steve Clarke’s side are potentially two games away from a historic return to the World Cup for the first time since Craig Brown led Scotland to France in 1998.
Scotland are already guaranteed at least a Play-Off place, after securing 10 points from the first four matches.
Top spot, and automatic qualification, is still an option though, with the Scots needing at least a point away to Greece and a win over the Danes at an already sold-out Hampden Park on Tuesday.
Speaking ahead of the games McGinn said: “We knew the job we have at hand to set ourselves up for Tuesday but the full focus is on Saturday and what we have to do and we’re training hard. We’ve no excuses come Saturday.
“The last two performances weren’t great, but like we keep touching on, the two results were really good and it sets us up for a really exciting finish.
“If you asked us at the start of the campaign, would you like to be in this position, I think the majority of us, and the majority of the country, would say ‘yes’.
“I think we’ve given ourselves a chance to qualify directly and we’re going to give it absolutely everything to do that.
“I’m sure the whole nation’s excited but, for us, we need to bottle that up and use it to full us for Saturday.
“I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of good things in the game. Not everything I’ve achieved has resulted in a medal but I’ve managed to do a lot of special things that’ll live with me forever but I think qualifying for the World Cup would eclipse anything I’ve ever achieved in the game.
“We’ve got 180 minutes to put ourselves in the best position – starting Saturday. We know it’s going to be difficult, Greece will feel like they owe us one so we’ll need to go there and put in a similar performance to when we won there last time.
“We’re going to have to suffer, we’re going to have to defend and we’re going to have to put bodies on the line but if we want to get to a World Cup you need to suffer at times.
“We’re excited and prepared and ready to go.”
