Scotland manager Steve Clarke hailed his players for reaching successive European Championships and doubts they “will fully realise the significance of their achievement yet”.

Scotland’s place at Germany 2024 was confirmed with two matches to spare by Spain’s 1-0 win in Norway.

It is just the fourth men’s Euros qualification in Scotland’s history.

“I would like to congratulate the players in qualifying for back-to-back tournaments,” said Clarke. “I would also like to thank my backroom team for their support and, of course, the fans who have packed Hampden Park to capacity and made it a place to be feared once again.

“They have played a key part in our success, both home and away, and they can now look forward to making their plans for Germany — although I suspect many had done so before tonight.

“I said after Euro 2020 that we wanted to be serial qualifiers again and reaching successive Euro finals shows the progress we’ve made. We will raise a glass tonight to celebrate but then it’s back to work tomorrow in preparation for our friendly against France.

“Then we turn our attention to Georgia and Norway next month and finishing with as many points as we can.”

The men’s side had gone 23 years without making a major tournament until Euro 2020, and Clarke is the first manager to lead the nation to consecutive European Championships.

The Scots exited at the group stage of the delayed finals two years ago and captain Andy Robertson says the target next summer is to improve on that showing.

“It’s a great achievement for this squad to have qualified for Euro 2024 with two games remaining,” said Robertson. “When we qualified via the play-offs last time, we set ourselves a target of doing it automatically next time - so that’s the first mission accomplished.

“Euro 2020 was a great experience and the objective for us next summer is to build on that previous experience and improve on our last overall tournament performance.

“Our fans have been immense. We thank them for playing a huge part in our success and we look forward to seeing them in Germany in their tens of thousands.”

Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell says “a huge amount has changed” during Clarke’s tenure as manager, with back-to-back European Championship qualification secured after a gap of more than 20 years.

“The players and Steve deserve a huge amount of credit,” he told BBC ‘Good Morning Scotland’. “Even when the draw was made, everybody would have taken an ‘all or nothing’ match in that last game against Norway, but the players have been incredible.

“To qualify as one of the first teams is an incredible achievement. We need to now back ourselves as being a good team - and good sides win games.”

Maxwell believes there are significant differences between next summer’s tournament and Euro 2020, which was delayed by a year and subject to restrictions because of the Covid pandemic.

“There were only 12,500 people allowed at the games whereas there will be more than 12,500 Scots in Germany next summer,” he added. “The last Euros were in Scotland, which was great, but the Tartan Army want to go somewhere, they want to travel.

“We also qualified in the play-offs in March when the finals were in June whereas now we can plan more and think about the friendlies in March and June.”

Despite the financial boost of another major tournament — and with Euro 2028 also coming to the country - Maxwell played down hopes of Hampden Park being notably overhauled.

“The changes will be cosmetic as much as anything else — there is not going to be significant infrastructure,” he said. “That just comes down to finance. I fully appreciate the view behind the goals isn’t great and that’s something supporters want us to be able to fix - the reality is we don’t have the finance to do that.

“That’s going to be hundreds of millions of pounds and even if we had that I’m not sure the priority would be doing up Hampden, we want to do a lot more for the game around the country and the facilities problem we have.”