Callum McGregor reveals the Scotland thought he COULDN'T share after Germany mauling as McGinn fronts up to gutted fans

Bruised Callum McGregor has admitted to feeling ‘embarrassed’ and ‘angered’ by Scotland’s feeble showing during the mauling in Munich, writes Keith Jackson in Germany.

McGregor was still hurting yesterday back at the Scots tournament HQ here in Garmisch-Partenkirchen as Steve Clarke and his players licked their wounds following that 5-1 thrashing at the Allianz. The Celtic skipper remains adamant that the national team can recover from this horror show of a start to Group A by taking out their frustrations on both Switzerland and Hungary in the remaining two matches.

He said: “The word ‘embarrassment’ is what I was thinking after the game. I didn’t say it to anyone because it was too raw at the moment. But that is the word I had in my head on my way off the pitch. You work so hard to get to this level and then we don’t do ourselves justice.

“That is what hurts the most. You can go and you can play well and still lose to Germany. Let’s make no bones about it, they are a top team and they will be there or thereabouts to win this tournament.

“But when you come off and there is a sense that we did not do ourselves justice and that you will probably have to live with that forever. People will remember that forever. You are a professional and you understand what has happened.

“Now it’s about trying to rectify that. You will never be able to rectify the result because what has happened, has happened. But if you can get yourself out of the group then it diminishes. Then, in 10 or 15 years’ time, people will say, ‘Yeah, but they got out of the group and they achieved something great!’. That is where the mindset has to be from here on because it was disappointing last night.”

Asked if there was also an element of anger over the abject standard of Scotland’s performance McGregor nodded: “There is, aye.” And he admits the Swiss and the Hungarians will now see Scotland as a potential soft touch in the group.

McGregor said: “This is where we have to be strong. Everybody will come at us and quite rightly after a poor performance. But we can’t let it derail us - we can’t let it pull us apart and have people start going into their little groups.

“You have to stay together, you have to stay strong and ultimately you have to prove people wrong. We had a poor performance last night and a poor result and people see that and start to smell blood. The two teams that we’re going to play next will smell blood.

“So it’s now about what you’ve got inside. You want to rectify that and put it right. So for sure the next 48 hours will be really important.”

And John McGinn admits Scotland’s players feel like they’ve let the country down. But the Aston Villa midfielder STILL thinks Steve Clarke’s men can recover to reach the knock-out stage. Clarke’s boys must now compose themselves before facing Switzerland in Cologne on Wednesday where defeat is unthinkable. McGinn knows the wave of optimism across the nation pre-tournament has been squashed by a poor display. But he’s convinced they can turn it around against the Swiss.

He said: “You see the massive support, the optimism around the whole country - and we feel like we’ve burst that bubble a bit. But we still have an opportunity to get through this group and we’ll do everything we can to achieve it. We know we need to find our levels again over the next couple of days. But we can talk about it - ultimately, there’s a lot of us in here who need to up it. We know that.”

McGinn is well aware that Friday night’s debacle was nowhere near good enough - and a long way from a brilliant qualifying campaign which included wins over Spain and Norway. Defensively, Clarke’s side toiled against the Germans who could have scored more than five.

Scotland will be without Ryan Porteous for the second game after a red card, which topped off a miserable night for the manager. While his backline will face criticism, McGinn held his hands up and said Scotland’s forward players must start scoring again.

He said: “It’s easy to talk about the goals we’re losing but myself and others are now in a massive goal drought. So it works both ways. Collectively, you can’t point fingers at one or two players. As a group, we need to improve. We need to concede less and create more chances.

“I don’t think we had a shot on Friday, which is worrying. But we know we can compete with these teams. We’ve gone toe-to-toe with Spain and Holland recently.

“For a long time, Scotland wasn’t on the end of those types of shorelines so we need to get back to what we were doing. We have had bumps along the road, so it’s up to us now. The older ones in the group have to keep us going and get ready for Wednesday.”