THE Scotland Under-19s defender Alex Iacovitti reckons the rise of Nottingham Forest team-mate Oliver Burke can provide inspiration for him and the rest of Scot Gemmill's team.
The young Scots face Bulgaria today in Croatia in the final game of their Euro Elite Round after two losses to Belgium and the hosts.
Gemmill's side was considerably weakened by the promotion of Burke and the Celtic left back Kieran Tierney straight into the first-team squad for tomorrow's friendly with Denmark.
Iacovitti reckons Burke's progress proves there is a path for promotion under Scotland manager Gordon Strachan.
He said: "Oli’s a great player. Everyone who has played alongside him would say that. He’s had a good run of games at Forest, done well and scored a few goals. He’s someone who has taken his chance. He’s flying at the moment.
"It shows what can be achieved. Hopefully I’ll get my chance and find myself doing what Oli’s done, said Iacovitti. "If I get my chance at Forest you never know where that could take you, maybe into the Scotland squad.
"I’ve been doing well and I’m captain of the Forest Under-21s. I’m training with the first team now, though it was disappointing to see the gaffer, Dougie Freedman, go. You have to take it on the chin and try to finish the season strongly.
"He was good for me. He was great for the youth boys. He’d speak to us after training and you could get anything you wanted off your chest with him. He’s gone now and we have to move on but I have a lot of respect for him. Every time a new gaffer’s come in it’s not gone their way, especially with injuries. Hopefully whoever comes in does a good job and we can get back into the Premier League.
"If I get my chance at Forest you never know where that could take you, maybe into the Scotland squad."
But Iacovitti refused to blame the absence of Burke and Tierney for the Scots' poor display in the Balkans.
He pointed out: "Oli and Kieran are great players, but I’m not sure we can say that they alone would have made all the difference or changed the game. We have a good team and we had a game-plan that we wanted to try and execute. It’s good for them to have got the call-ups and we had good enough players to come in and replace them. I hope they do well.
"All of the boys are gutted. It comes down to key moments. We have to go into the Bulgaria game now and try to finish as strongly as we can. It wasn’t to be."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here