Strachan sticking to his guns

Photo by Jeff Holmes

Scotland manager Gordon Strachan will not alter his side's style of play when they face world champions Germany.

Strachan has long admired Joachim Low's approach and felt the Germans were worthy winners of the World Cup following their victory over Argentina on Sunday.

But he thinks it could be counter-productive to adapt his own tactics when Scotland play their opening European Championship qualifier in Dortmund on September 7.

Strachan, back on Scottish soil following his television work in Brazil, said:

I was writing down plans in the last couple of weeks and I looked at the board and thought 'yeah, I've cracked it'. And then I realised I had 14 players playing.

But we're not going to change. You could chop and change for everybody you're playing against, it could confuse the players.

We have a couple of ways of defending and we're working on our attacking, which I saw in the Nigeria game, there was more variation.

But that will take time to really click and fully get what I want.

Until that time we want to keep on winning football games and gradually get to where we want to go.''

Strachan feels Mario Gotze's late winner in Rio adds an extra edge to their clash with Germany.

I just think it makes it more exciting,'' he said.It's gone up a level and we're looking forward to it.

We were encouraged by the way Chile played in Germany recently, Chile were absolutely fantastic (in a 1-0 defeat).

But now it's up a level, you're playing the world champions.

So it's a fantastic experience for us. We're all looking forward to it as coaches and players.

We want to test ourselves against the best teams, and they are a team, that's for sure.''

Strachan believes other managers and teams can learn from Germany - but not necessarily put the lessons into practice.

He said: In one of my first interviews in this job someone asked me what style I like. I think I shocked them by saying Germany.

Then I thought, oh no, I can see the headline: 'We want to be the new Germany'. Which is not what I meant.

But the Germans, of all the top teams, they look like a team. The other ones were based on an individual, waiting for individuals to produce a certain bit of form.

But the Germans were a team. That's the type of fotball that's winning games just now.

I can learn from Colin Montgomerie. Can I do his swing? No.

I'd like to play tennis like Andy Murray but I don't have the weapons for that.

You build your team on what you've got. I can see every coach in the world heading to Germany to see what's happening there but that's the way they are.

Of the top sides, they were the best team. If you look at the likes of Costa Rica, Algeria, Chile, Australia to a certain extent, they didn't have top, top players, so what they do is look like a team.

They actually have to work harder because they've not got the stars to win games.

We're in that bracket. We hope we will have a team unit that can play against anybody, until the time we develop world-class stars.

We're confident with the style we've got that we can give everybody a game.''