Scotland should bank the feelgood factor and bring it out again in time for the play-offs, according to Callum McGregor.
The Celtic midfielder has sensed a growth in the team’s self-belief even though they failed to qualify automatically from Group I for Euro 2020, ending up behind both Belgium and Russia.
The finished on a high note with a 3-1 victory over Kazakhstan and McGregor will now look on eagerly along with his Scots teammates when the draw for the play-offs is made at Uefa headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland tomorrow.
Potential opponents for Steve Clarke’s men in the one-off semi-final, which will be played at Hampden on March 26, are Hungary, Bulgaria, Israel and Romania.
Should Scotland win that one then they would go on to the play-off final against either Serbia or Norway on March 31, with a draw to decide which nation gets home advantage.
It is a long wait for the players but McGregor believes they will be able to crack open the safe and brink out the positives when the time comes.
He said: “I think we have turned a corner in terms of intensity, the way we want to play and the way we want to press the game.
“It is about trying to bank that feeling.
“We will go away and obviously club stuff will take care of itself between now and March.
“Then, when we come back, we will all be in a better place.
“The manager will feel good about himself, the players will feel good and we can go about trying to fill the stadium and make sure we get to the finals.
“Slowly but surely we are getting there.
“It is a new group of players and we changed manager halfway through the campaign, which is always difficult because the gaffer is under pressure to turn it around.
“Obviously, it is disappointing we did not qualify but the work we did got us to a place where we can try to qualify.
“We have to be positive and go into these play-off games and really be confident we can do it.”
The Scots fell behind against Kazakhstan on Tuesday night before storming back to win 3-1 and make it a three-match winning finale to the campaign.
McGregor agreed that not so long ago they might have struggled to recover from losing that goal.
He said: “That’s probably been the change in mentality.
“Previously we were guilty of, when we lost a goal, heads going down and we could not get back into the game.
“However, when it happened in Cyprus and we lost a quick goal you saw the reaction – we scored almost straight away.
“There is probably that bit of belief in the squad and in the team that if we do go behind we can still win games because we are pressing and we have good players who can unlock defences.
“We have John McGinn scoring goals at will so everyone just feels a bit better about themselves.
“The confidence is there. Like I say, we will try to bank that and take it to March.
“When we had the four bad games in a row (two defeats to Belgium and a couple of losses against Russia) everyone probably thought it was miles away.
“Now, though, we probably could not be in a better place confidence-wise leading into the play-offs.”
