Hutton thanks Strachan for standing by him in dark days
BEING emotionally attached to the Scotland national football team must take years off you given what they put their hardy band of supporters through.
Although actually playing for the side, which in Prague on Thursday night Alan Hutton will do for the 50th time, has done the exact opposite for this particular player’s career.
For longer than he now cares to remember, he was ostracised at Aston Villa by Paul Lambert who told the former Rangers man to train with the kids; the ultimate putdown to a senior pro.
Hutton could have down tools and spat the dummy. He would not have been the first nor the last to chuck it after finding out he wasn’t wanted. However, he always had the national team, no matter who the manager was they kept picking him despite his lack of games, and this meant Hutton refused to give up even during his darkest days.
And so against the Czech Republic, the 31-year-old will enter Scottish football’s Hall of Fame, no mean feat given that he didn’t play once for Villa between 2012 and 2014, a time where his only club run-outs came in a variety of brief loan spells.
“Playing for Scotland was the one thing which kept me on track,” said Hutton as he recalled those rough years.
“If I had been a player who was not with Scotland then I could easily have gone the other way.
“I was training and in my mind I had something to go for – which was Scotland – that is what kept me going. I have to thank the managers for keeping me involved at the time.
“I could easily have thrown in the towel and said ‘enough is enough’. I could have slipped down the leagues, left Villa and if I had thought that the international scene wasn’t happening any more, that I wasn’t in the frame, well like a flick of a switch you can go from high to low.
“When something isn’t working, it is easy to slip away and fall down the ranks. The national team gave me something to look forward to; even if the game was in a few months, I had something to get myself ready for.
“So on those days I trained with kids thinking ‘I don’t fancy this’ there would be a Scotland game in a couple of weeks and I had to make sure I was at a level which meant I could at least compete with the rest of the boys. It kept me on the straight and narrow.”
A 50th cap is something to celebrate but it has not been a great season for Hutton at club level. He wasn’t up for speaking about Aston Villa but then where would you begin with that basket case of a club.
“It was never in the plans to get 50,” admitted Hutton. “I was taking each game as it came but from about 25 that’s when I started to look and think I could reach 50. I’m happy to have got here, it’s a great achievement for myself.
“I’ve always said I owe a lot to the manager. Gordon Strachan has been unbelievable with me – he didn’t have to pick me in squads, never mind me coming to play, so I owe a lot to him for that section of my Scotland career. I’m just happy to be here and be involved.
“I never felt awkward about being picked. Every time I came I gave everything in training because I had to prove to myself I was fit enough and able to cope with 90 minutes, and so I did what anyone else would do when they come here.
“It means a lot to me, I never thought I would get this far so to be here is surreal. You don’t really take it all in until you speak to people about it. I don’t think I’ve really taken it all in. I’ve spoken to my dad, Alan, about it and he’s over the moon, more excited about it than I am, but when I get round to looking back on it, this will be such a massive achievement in my football career.”
And before he calls it a day Hutton would like, as we all would, to see his country actually qualify for a major championship.
He said. “I’m 31 now and I’m looking and thinking about how long can I play on and what’s going to happen in the future. I want to play in a tournament.
“To play in the Premiership and Champions League is brilliant, same as the international team, but the big ones are the two big international tournaments and I would hate to go through my whole international career and not have gone to a big tournament. It’s the one thing for me that’s missing. Time is running out and I have to do it soon.”
I would hate to go through my whole international career and not have gone to a big tournament. It’s the one thing missing