Steve Clarke joked he couldn’t fully enjoy Scotland’s Hampden Euro 2024 qualification lap of honour because he was still raging at Norway’s late goal that denied them victory in their final Group A game.

“I might bypass how I’m feeling after tonight’s game. It was a strange game and strange atmosphere. You don’t get too many 3-3 games in international football. Overall, in terms of get group, the performance of the lads has been fantastic. To qualify in the manner we did… the draw was favourable to us with three home games in the first four but you have to capitalise and we did that, put ourselves in a great position and got over the line with two games to spare which turned out to be two difficult games.

But the national team boss opted to skip analysing the 3-3 thriller in Glasgow to instead focus on an incredible campaign that saw Scotland book their place in Germany next summer with a couple of games to spare. Clarke watched his side share six goals in their last qualifier which will see them go into Pot 3 for the draw for next summer’s finals when it takes place in Hamburg on December 2.

“I spoke calmly and quietly at half time! I asked them to play with a bit more intensity because we played a bit like a testimonial, a bit like ‘Look at us, we’re a great team, we’ve qualified for Germany’. That’s not us, that’s not Scotland. We have to play on the front foot and be aggressive, especially at home, and get about the opposition. The second half was much better than the first and that’s why it was so disappointing to concede at the end - we switched off a little bit in the cross to the back post but we’ll learn from that and hopefully get better.

Scotland twice came from behind through John McGinn’s penalty and an own goal before Stuart Armstrong’s strike looked to have put them on course for a victory. However, ex Celtic man Moi Elyounoussi netted at the death. And Clarke told Viaplay: “It was nice at the end. I didn’t smile too much because I was still fuming about the third goal we conceded because that’s just the way I’m made up. It’s probably not a night to overanalyse this one but analyse the campaign and to take three points off Spain at Hamden was crucial and four points off Norway and Georgia, and six off Cyprus, you end up with the same points total, minus the six against the Pot 6 team, as we had for the World Cup when were second place behind Denmark.

“This group of players have shown the country, the Tartan Army and people of Scotland they want to turn up and do well. The most important thing for me was to be competitive every single time we went to the pitch and if you look at the games in the last couple of campaigns we’re always competitive and you have to be if you want to qualify for major tournaments.”

The battle for a place on the plane to Germany starts now but Clarke said: “We’ve got six months of football to play (until the Euros). Something will happen you’re not expecting and that’s the nature of football. So I won’t lose sleep over that in December, January or February - maybe in March when I have to start thinking about narrowing the squad down to 23.”