ANDY ROBERTSON "I WATCHED THE LAST WORLD CUP WITH DIOGO JOTA - WE BOTH HAD DREAMS OF PLAYING IN IT ONE DAY"

At the age of 32, Scotland's skipper has fulfilled a lifetime ambition - his former Liverpool team-mate was in his thoughts, the day he made history

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You first started playing for Scotland in 2014 and had your fair share of lows before the team's recent successes. How important was Steve Clarke in turning things around?

When he first came in, what he wanted was more international experience. If you look at his first squad, the amount of caps we had wasn't a lot. Sometimes he gets criticised for picking the same players, but now we have a squad with international experience, which is quite hard to get and keep together. Now we have a squad that's desperate to meet up at every training camp, and doesn't want to give a yard. Everybody wants to show up and give their best for their country. That's down to the manager. I think it's a collective effort in terms of the quality of players we've got, but it starts and ends with the manager in terms of what he envisaged, and he's seen that through. Now we have more experience at international level, that can help you when times get tough, to get over the line in certain games. That's been a large part of why we've been so good in qualifying campaigns. We know how to win games at this level.

What have you found Clarke like to work with behind closed doors?

A lot of people talk about his pre-match meeting before Denmark. It was a huge game – we knew that if we won, we'd qualify for our first World Cup in so long. His team talk in the hotel before we left was inspirational – it was emotional, and maybe you don't see that side of him too often. He went into his life journey and our journey together as a team, where we've been and where we want to go, and that really set the tone for that night's game. I already believed it was going to be a special night, but after leaving that meeting and getting on the bus, I didn't think anything was going to get in our way.

You've won almost everything at club level with Liverpool. How big a career goal was it to reach a World Cup?