Scotland 0-0 Portugal debrief

Mark Atkinson reports from the goalless draw at Hampden.

Transcript

00:00Good evening from Hampden Park. All quiet and dark here now. An hour or so ago Scotland

00:08were playing out a pretty impressive 0-0 draw with Portugal in the Nations League. That's

00:12Steve Clarke's men up and running in the campaign. A really hard-fought, gritty performance from

00:19Scotland. Excellent defensively against a really talented Portugal team. It would be

00:24unfair to single out too many of the defenders but John Soutar and Grant Hamley really dealt

00:29with Cristiano Ronaldo well. He's still waiting to score a goal on Scottish. So they had plenty

00:33of chances to Portugal, number 9, but was unable to take them. A lot of his efforts

00:38going over the bar or wide. Craig Gordon made a big save to the 9. Bruno Fernandes, Leiton,

00:44Debutant Nicky Devlin who came on it right back with just a couple of minutes to go.

00:48A huge block from a steering Raphael Lear volley. That all contributed to a really big

00:54point for Scotland and it stops the rot in terms of losing anyway. Scotland are still

01:00on a run of 1 win in 16 matches which is not pretty viewing by any stretch of the imagination.

01:06What this result should do is give them a platform to build upon when the Nations League

01:10reconvenes next month when they play Croatia here on November 15 and then Poland three

01:16days later away from home. You're hoping by then Scotland will have some of their normal

01:22mainstays back in the squad. Remember more than a dozen what you would call regular picks

01:26for Scotland weren't here and that really meant that the players that had to play in

01:31Croatia were called upon once more in this match and they entered the tank once more.

01:35I think the fans here at a packed Hamden probably left with a little bit more optimism than

01:40they have done recently. Certainly Steve Clarke was in a good mood in his post-match press

01:45conference hailing a number of his players. I thought the most important thing was probably

01:49the performance of John Souter and Grant Hanley in the centre half. It's a new partnership

01:54they've put together but they were very impressive keeping a number of Portugal players quiet

02:00and it's really pleasing in particular to see John Souter who's had such an unfortunate

02:03time in terms of Scotland playing really well. So yeah the international window ends on a

02:09positive note. Scotland have finished off this international break with a goalless draw

02:14against a very good Portugal team at Hamden.