GORDON STRACHAN has revealed he has an “obsession” to fix Scottish football and will unveil his blueprint to do just that before the end of the year.

The Scotland manager and Brian McClair, Performance Director of the SFA, have spent many hours discussing how the game in this country can be vastly improved from grassroots level right up to the international team.

Strachan, speaking extensively for the first time since signing a new deal to stay on with the national team, stopped short of revealing what plans have been drawn up, but offered enough to suggest the recommendations will be far-reaching.

Asked about his mission to save the game in this country, Strachan said: “It’s become my thing now. It’s become an obsession.

“I was at Spartans yesterday, watching the things they are doing for younger kids, but it’s all about sport in general. In terms of football, I think I can make a difference but I think every kid can play a sport.

“But then we have to talk to the government and say, ‘You have to do something about this’.

“Qualifying for the World Cup would be just magnificent but I’ve got this other thing in the back of my head and it’s been their since that night in Portugal. I just didn’t have the time to be able to try to influence it. It’s not easy to influence it or to change it and who is to say I’m right.

“But when I speak to Brian and other people who have been about the game I think to myself, yeah, I can do something here.”

That night in Portugal Strachan spoke about was 22 years ago when in Lisbon “a team died” according to then Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh.

“Funnily enough I said that (something has to be done) when Scotland got beat 5-0 by Portugal and Ally McCoist broke his leg,” revealed Strachan.

“There was an outcry about the standard. I said it at that time but only after another 20 years do I feel that I can affect things, and Brian can affect things, and the SFA can affect things.

"At the time I thought we had to do something drastic about Scottish football because I saw where it was going.”

Strachan admitted it would be hard for him to be at the centre of any changes unless he was “part of the set-up” and the fact he will be charge for the World Cup campaign which starts in a year allows him to do just that.

But even if there is a slow start, which causes him to leave his job, Strachan has pledged to continue to work on his state of the nation plans.

He said: "The World Cup, you need to take that away, because it won’t make any difference to what I want to do with footballers from the age of eight.

“I might have to do one to do the other. I want to qualify for the World Cup, but I also want to do this. It may take me until I’m 70 to do what I want to do there, so management is different from that. There’s absolutely nothing else on my mind."

And there was never a doubt, at least in his mind, that he would walk away after the final European Championship qualifying match against Gibraltar in Faro.

“I was positive but I wanted to make sure everything was still in place, that the SFA was fully behind me, the staff fully behind me, the players fully behind me, and the fans,” said Strachan.

“Even walking about the hotel made up my mind. I didn’t expect that reception in Gibraltar, I must say, I thought it was going to be a long, long night, a long couple of days, but it didn’t work out that way. It was quite an emotional experience.

"We did it quite quickly, we got back on the Monday, Tuesday watched Under-21s game, Wednesday morning we had another meeting, by Friday it was all done. It was all done really quickly.

“I enjoy the job, I love the job, it’s a great thing to make a nation happy with a lot of the performances but just falling short is something I have to deal with."

Strachan would have walked if he had not been backed. However, no player or suit wanted him to leave, and it was the players in particular who had the biggest say.

"If we had been knocked out, if I couldn’t see progression and I wasn’t looking forward to working with the players than that's one thing, but I knew well before that this was a good bunch," he said.

“This lot could do well. We scored some terrific goals, had terrific performances, and that gives you something to work with. If I felt there wasn’t anything to work with then that’s different.

"So that was already sorted out. The performance against Poland was just terrific. I thought ‘we must continue this’. That kind of nailed it."