Gordon Strachan blames genetics as Scotland crash out

Gordon Strachan has blamed his players' lack of height as his team crashed out of another World Cup qualifying campaign.

Strachan bemoaned his teams lack of physical stature. Picture: PA

The Scots could only draw against Slovenia in a match they had to win to reach the play-offs.

Asked what went wrong for Scotland – both last night and across the campaign – Strachan bemoaned his team’s lack of physical stature and admitted it was a problem that couldn’t be easily solved.

“Genetically, we are behind,” explained the manager. “The last campaign we were the second smallest, apart from Spain, so that means we had to pick a team tonight to try and combat the height and strength. Even at that we couldn’t combat their height and strength at set plays.

“Genetically, we have to work at things. Don’t know if we can get big women and men together, and see what we can do.

“It is a problem for us because we have to fight harder for every ball and jump higher. Nobody tell me their technique apart from one player is better than any of ours but physically we have a problem.”

Slovenia manager Srecko Katanec was blunt when assessing his own last match in charge. Scotland scored twice but they didn’t have many chances,” he insisted. “We were clearly the better team today.”