Leeds United's Liam Cooper underlines summer determination amid Scotland demand

Leeds United's Liam Cooper is determined to put his best foot forward this week in order to nail down a place in Steve Clarke's Scotland line-up ahead of Euro 2024. Scotland play the first of two Euros warm-up games this evening as they take on Gibraltar at the Estadio Algarve in Portugal and they'll follow that up by hosting Finland on Friday night.

That's when Clarke is expected to trim in his provisional 28-man squad down to 26 players, ensuring a number of players within the group have something to play for over the next few days. Cooper, who is one of the most senior players in the squad, is expected to make the final cut and the Leeds man will have eyes on a spot in the backline for Scotland's Euro opener against Germany on June 14.

The tournament could also give the defender a chance to put himself in the shop window as his Leeds contract ticks towards expiry at the end of the month. Cooper's full focus will be on Scotland for the time being, though, and he has underlined the importance of tonight's friendly clash with Gibraltar.

"You've got to put yourself in the manager's thoughts whenever you play, whatever minutes you get," the 18-cap Cooper said, per the BBC. "You've got to be at your best and give your all for this team and, to be fair, every single player has in training and we drive each other.

"We've got a great feeling around the place and obviously it's going to be a tough decision for the manager and it's going to be tough to take for whoever does miss out, but right now our focus is on obviously getting in that final squad and getting on that plane to Germany."

Scotland aren't approaching the tournament in a rich vein of form having gone seven games without a victory, a run that stretches back to last September, conceding 19 goals along the way. However, the Tartan Army won five straight games before the beginning of that wretched sequence of results, including a 2-0 victory over Spain.

As such, they know what they are capable of when they are firing on all cylinders and Cooper is keen to see his side build up some momentum this week.

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"The last few camps we haven't had the wins we wanted," he added. "I know we've played some top nations but we need to get back to ourselves, priding ourselves on clean sheets and doing everything we can to win games. That's certainly been the message this week.

"This is going to be a good game for us. We don't underestimate anybody and we've got to get a strong performance, full of energy."

Scotland have been drawn to face to hosts Germany, Hungary and Switzerland in Group A and after exiting Euro 2020 in the group stage, they’ll be keen to show progress by making it to the knockout stages.