ALEX McLeish believes he has fulfilled his destiny by taking charge of Scotland for a second time.
The 59-year-old, who was manager of the national team for 10 games back in 2007, was paraded at Hampden yesterday after signing a two year contract.
Many members of the Tartan Army are unimpressed that McLeish, who joined Birmingham City after failing to reach the Euro 2008 finals, has replaced Gordon Strachan.
Read more: Tam McManus: Critics are wrong, Alex McLeish will bring back glory days
However, the Scotland great, who won 77 caps between 1980 and 1993 and played in three World Cup finals, has vowed to win them over by leading his country to Euro 2020.
“The opportunity arose and I felt I had to go for it,” he said. “I believed it was my destiny.
“Michael (O’Neill) was the first choice, let’s not make any bones about that. But I have always felt I was the right guy to be the next Scotland coach. Honestly, I felt it was fate. It was meant to happen.
“I believe I’m the right man and you have to believe in yourself. I just feel it’s the right time for me. I feel I’m a better manager now. The common sense factor grows in you and you see things from a different way.
“Since I left to go to England in 2007, it’s been a lot of fire-fighting. But I had quite a lot of success in those years and I’ve got a lot of experience.”
McLeish admitted that he could understand why some Scotland supporters were against him being brought on board, but insisted he could get them behind him.
“It’s up to me to try to get the guys onside,” he said. “If they are a wee bit reticent at first, then I just have to get performance levels from the team which are exciting for them. The bottom line is getting the right results.
“Listen, of course I can understand it. Not everyone is going to be happy no matter what happens. You get divided opinion. The only way to change it is by performing well and getting good results. That is the cure for dissent.”
McLeish, whose first game will be a friendly against Costa Rica next month, will announce his assistants next week, but Peter Grant, who he worked with at Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, and James McFadden, who played under him at Birmingham City and with Scotland, are being tipped to join his backroom team.
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