£15m Napoli star vows to 'make things right' as Scotland comeback thwarted by late Poland sucker-punch

Scotland's Billy Gilmour celebrates as he scores to make it 2-1 against Poland | SNS Group

Billy Gilmour has promised the Tartan Army they will “make it right” after Scotland’s miserable 2024 continued following an agonising 3-2 defeat against Poland in their opening Nations League clash.

The former Brighton midfielder, who completed a £15 million transfer to Italian giants Napoli alongside international team mate Scott McTominay last week, scored just his second career goal at the start of the second half. McTominay also got in on the act to cancel out Sebastian Szymanski’s long-range effort and Robert Lewandowski’s penalty.

But there was to be late heartbreak for Steve Clarke’s side as they pushed for a winner. Nicola Zalewski was on the receiving end of a rash challenge by Grant Hanley and the Polish winger picked himself up to convert a 95th minute winner for the visitors.

Lost the ball to easily for the opener, though the pass from McLean was poor. Didn't impact the game enough, a rare off night for the Napoli man. | SNS Group

A trip to Portugal is up next for the Scots, who have now won just once in 13 games and will now go a full calendar year without winning a competitive match. A dejected Gilmour admitted: “Yeah, we are disappointed. We felt like we were the better team. We’ve shown that, especially the second half, we’ve came out, went for it, get the two goals back and then to concede another penalty. It was tough. We’ll go back, we’ll look at it.

“There was good stuff there as well but ultimately the final result wasn’t good. You get the goal, this whole place starts to really feel it again. As I said, we played well. It was maybe, final part we’re a bit open, we were going for it as well, we give away a penalty but we’ll get together, go back, watch it and make sure we make it right.

“We felt like we should have got the win, especially in the second half we came out and the first half was good moments as well and it’s a tough group so we need to go into the next game and make sure we’re ready. I think we leave it out there all the time. We’re a good group of boys who are proud to represent our country and go and give that extra bit. Of course, it’s a tough one to take right now and I can’t really sum up into words.”

Deflated head coach Steve Clarke refused to single out Norwich defender Hanley for his role in conceding the late spot-kick, stating: “Everyone’s disappointed, we lost a game that we shouldn’t have lost. It’s not about picking out individuals, we never do that, I’ve never done that. I’m not going to start now. We win as a team, we lose as a team. We’ll go away, we’ll analyse the game and we’ll speak in camp.

“I’m obviously disappointed to lose a game like that, a game that we shouldn’t lose. If you make errors at this level, you get punished, and we got punished severely for the errors that we made in the game. I think if I analyse the performance, I have to be happy with it. There’s a small crumb of comfort for a head coach. We didn’t have a lot of time to work on the training pitch.

“We knew the system that Poland would play would cause one or two different issues to what you would normally face. I thought we dealt with that well, the team shape was good, the attitude and energy of the players was excellent.”