Steve Clarke sensed the players needed freshness in the dressing room Former Scotland boss Steve Clarke says he had to cajole the Scottish FA into handing him a new contract as national head coach shortly before the World Cup finals this summer because he felt the governing body was hedging its bets.
But the 63-year-old insists he nevertheless always planned to resign if he failed to lead Scotland beyond the group stage for the first time.
Speaking for the first time since the tournament in the Americas, Clarke was being interviewed by former Chelsea and Scotland team-mate Pat Nevin at Spartans Community Foundation dinner in Edinburgh.
Asked about his exit from the job despite the four-year contract he signed on the eve of the tournament, and quoted by The Scotsman, he said: "It was never really a change of mind.
"I am quite a complex person. I wanted to control my narrative." Rangers failed to pursue Ferguson despite agreement - gossip SFA proposes youth quotas along with financial incentives Clark added: "Obviously we got to March and I hadn't been offered a new contract, which I thought was pretty strange.
You start to think are they hedging their bets a little bit, waiting on the tournament in the summer. "So I did a little bit in the media in March to give the SFA a little shove.