SCOTT Brown admits that he’d love a crack at the European Championships with Scotland this summer – but insisted that he has no regrets over his decision to retire from international duty back in February 2018.
Steve Clarke’s side secured the national team’s place at Euro 2020 after defeating Serbia on penalties in the final of the Nations League play-off – bringing the country’s 23-year wait to qualify for a major tournament to a close.
Brown concedes that having spent so long around the Scotland squad without reaching a tournament, he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t cast an envious glance towards the current crop of players and ponder what might have been.
But the 35-year-old insists that withdrawing from international selection prolonged his career at Celtic Park – adding that chats with former bosses Gordon Strachan and Brendan Rodgers convinced him that he had to be “selfish” with his career winding down.
“I’d love to still be there but I’ll be 36 by the time the Euros come,” he told Sky Sports. “The lads have done fantastically well to get there and I don’t think I would still be playing for Celtic if I was playing for them as well.
“I think that would have had a big impact on my career and on my body. I think I stepped away at the right time.
“I spoke to Gordon [Strachan] and Brendan [Rodgers] a lot about this, about how I had to be selfish towards the end of my career and look after myself so I could play as many games as possible for Celtic.
“Looking at it now, of course I’d love to be going to the Euros and to be a part of it. I played for Scotland for 11 years and I didn’t get to the Euros or the World Cup.
“That’s a little bit sad that it hasn’t been crossed off on my CV. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve had so many great years here and I probably wouldn’t still be here at 35 if I had been playing with Scotland until now.”
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