John McGinn harbours a few regrets from the Euro 2024 experience. When Scotland flew to their training base in Garmisch Pertenkirchen the midfielder wanted to make an impact in Germany by delivering perfect performances, rousing results and a slice of footballing history.
Two years later all anyone wants to talk about now is the night he donned a Tyrolean hat with feather and pin badges and joined a Bavarian oompah band on stage to perform a traditional Schuhplatter dance.
‘Do I regret that?’ he laughs now. “Maybe. But at that point I'm not thinking we wouldn't be successful. I had belief at that time.
‘I just thought when you're in Germany at the time, they were looking for a volunteer and obviously this mug was number one….”
Once bitten, twice shy as they say. Clogging is the official folk dance of North Carolina. A high energy dance which blends European, African American and Native American folk traditions McGinn will keep his hands by his side if they come looking for volunteers at Scotland’s pre World Cup training camp in Charlotte.
"There won't be much dancing before the tournament, but if we manage to get through the group I can put that outfit back on and do the dancing again," he added.
A Bavarian barn dance failed to explain the legginess of McGinn and his Scotland teammates in Germany. Some of the big players - the eight out of ten man - seemed drained of vim at the end of a long domestic season. For Steve Clarke and his backroom team finding a way to inject energy and life and goals in to the team will be the key to a better tournament in America.
While the stifling heat and conditions don’t help the early signs are promising. Like Curacao in the Hampden send off Bolivia were put to the sword in New Jersey on Friday night. The SFA have given this squad of players everything they could possibly need to win games of football and it now falls to Clarke and his players to apply the hard lessons of two underwhelming Euro campaigns.
“Personally I will do certain things differently,” McGinn acknowledges. ‘I didn’t play at my best in the last two major tournaments, alongside probably some others in the group
“In these games, in these tournaments you need your big players to come up with big moments.
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“Now I will enjoy the excitement building up to it, but as it gets closer to the games I will focus on playing the game and not the occasion.
“That’s what I have learned, not only at club level, but international level as well.
“The more big experiences and big games you are involved in you certainly adapt.”
He played in a pretty big game at the end of the season, lifting the Europa League trophy above his head as captain of Aston Villa. With the World Cup at the back of his mind he kept the celebrations measured and restrained. More restrained, certainly, than that time he won the Scottish League Cup with St Mirren in 2013.
“That was the biggest lesson I've ever had in my life…
‘So, after that I decided to try and enjoy these nights because they don't come around too often. I did.
‘The next day I enjoyed the parade as well, but in the back of my mind I had this tournament and when you've not achieved a World Cup qualification for 28 years you don't want to make any mistakes.”
Since leaving St Mirren McGinn has kept the career misjudgments to a minimum. On the ride to the media auditorium at Charlotte FC’s impressive Atrium Health Performance Centre he reflected on how different it all might have been had his first visit to the United States ended in a move to MLS side Houston Dynamo in 2015.
“That was probably a sliding doors moment,” he admits now.
“At that time it had been a very disappointing year for me. I felt as though I needed a fresh start after everything that happened.
“Owen Coyle and Sandy Stewart were great with me and I agreed to sign.
“But there was some red tape that prevented me from signing.
“Was it a blessing? Could I have been here my whole career? I don’t know.
“But it was certainly a big moment in my career and it could look very differently now.
“I felt was the right step in my career at that moment in time.
“But then I went to Hibs and that was one of the best decisions I made.
“At the time, it may have been out of my hands but it was a special few years and it certainly allowed me to show my true potential.”
A year later he won the Scottish Cup with Hibernian. Despite unfulfilled interest from his boyhood club Celtic he moved to Villa in 2018 and became a club legend, playing 300 games, leading the club to the Premier League, captaining them to a major European trophy and securing qualification for the Champions League.
“I met Joe Willis (former Houston Dynamo goalkeeper) at Nashville last year when we went over there for a friendly.
“He just started laughing and said ‘can you imagine you actually signed?’
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“I can’t say where I’d be now. But I think would be very different.
“Everything happens for a reason in football.”
Despite his success as one of the great midfield talents in the English Premier League the joy of John McGinn is that he remains completely unaffected by it all. He is still the same down-to-earth, ebullient, unaffected character he was growing up in Clydebank or playing for St Mirren. A rarity for a Premier League footballer every conversation starts with a handshake and a smile.
They’re so proud of him in his home town they painted a 25-foot mural in his honour on the side of a house on Taylor Street.
‘I'm glad they fixed the teeth,” he jokes. “It's a bit strange, but it obviously filled me with pride to see it.
‘All my little cousins, my nieces and nephews, they've had a look at it.
‘Hopefully it can inspire young kids from Clydebank to know they're one of their own on the world's biggest stage.”
He made it home for a couple of games of golf before travelling to America and saw the mural for himself.
‘Actually, the person's house it's on, I went to school with her son. He might feel a bit weird, but it's on Jake Anderson's house…..”
Murals are all the rage for Scotland players these days. Captain Andy Robertson’s portrait in Tancred Road, Liverpool is a short walk from Anfield and bears the motto, ‘Born in Glasgow, Made in Liverpool.’
Scott McTominay’s overhead kick against Denmark is immortalised on a wall overlooking Scotland’s Lesser Hampden training base.
McGinn hopes that his own image, complete with the iconic owl eyes goal celebration, is merely the precursor to more if this Scotland team become the first in history to progress from their World Cup group.
‘It's been a long time since we've seen that with Scottish players.
‘I think it puts a smile on my face to see the excitement of children again.
‘I see it in Erskine, dropping my niece and nephews to school. It's not actually that enjoyable anymore because you don't really see them going in.
‘You get all the kids outside wanting a selfie, but it's amazing that they've got people to look up to from their own country and the world's biggest stage again and that's to be celebrated definitely.
‘A generation's missed out, but thankfully this generation of children will see us all on the side of buildings….
