COLOGNE -- Scotland captain Andy Robertson has called on his team to play without fear in their key Euro 2024 clash with Switzerland on Wednesday evening and said it's time for the team to deliver for their thousands of fans who have travelled to Germany.
Scotland fell 5-1 to Germany in their Euro 2024 opener last Friday. The margin of defeat means Scotland desperately need to get a result against Switzerland in Cologne on Wednesday if they are to progress to the knockout stages. But it promises to be a tricky task given how well Switzerland played in their 3-1 win over Hungary on Saturday.
Robertson said he allowed the team to compartmentalise their heavy defeat on Saturday but told them to park any anger by the evening, with attention turning to Switzerland.
The Liverpool defender says the Swiss are a "template" for what Scotland want to become at major tournaments but is confident his team will be able to deliver if they can tap into the same winning mentality that saw them progress through a tricky qualification group with Spain and Norway.
"You've seen a team [in qualification] that was full of belief and ready to fight for each other and ready to go for every single ball and maybe on Friday we played a wee bit with fear, which we didn't want," Robertson said.
He added: "We need to be at our best again to try and get anything off Switzerland. And if we do that, we do believe that we can try and get a result, but they'll also be full of belief, full of confidence and rightly so after what they did on Saturday.
"But we have to show what we are about. We have to show what Scotland's about and if we do that then we believe that hopefully we can cause them problems and we can get a bit further up the pitch and causing problems in the box and things like that.
"But it's not going to be easy. They're a really good team and that's why we go into it. We're confident that we can get a result, but we're also full of praise of Switzerland. But like I said, maybe a wee bit of fear came in on Friday and we will be trying to make sure that that doesn't happen tomorrow."
Scotland have incredible support in Germany, with estimates putting around 200,000 fans travelling to Euro 2024 to support Steve Clarke's side. Robertson feels Scotland let the fans down with their performance on Friday night and said he's desperate to put that right.
"It is easy to talk about a game of football before or after the game, whatever you want, but it's not as easy to go out and do it and that's what we have to focus on. We need action.
"Obviously there was a lot of talk after the game as well. A lot of people critical and a lot of people probably from the outside couldn't wait to kind of dip into it. Yeah, so that's fine for them. They get paid to do that and we respect that, but now we have to act, we have to be on the pitch and we have to do a lot better on the pitch and that's what we are focused on.
"There was maybe a bit of hype around us in our own country and people excited and we love that and we hope they're excited again tomorrow, but we have to try and give them something to shout about because the support we had on Friday was right up there and we let them down.
"We didn't give them much to shout about, but even then they still supported us right to the end and we appreciate that massively and come tomorrow and the next game we will hopefully give them a bit more to shout about."
Clarke said Scotland have a fully fit squad to choose from, with only Ryan Porteous absent due to the suspension he picked up for the red card against Germany.