Euro 2024: ‘Why I wanted McTominay’ – Moyes on Scotland’s ‘biggest threat’ – BBC Sport

Get Scott McTominay in the Hungary box.

That has to happen as much as possible if Scotland are going to get the result they need in their last game in Group A.

In the past couple of years, the Manchester United man has been really important to Scotland because he can play in several different roles.

It was not too long ago that McTominay was as used as centre-half under Steve Clarke for a period but, more recently, he has played higher up the pitch – which is where I feel you get the best out of him.

When I watch him, it is his goals that stand out. He has got plenty of them for club and country in big games in the past few months, so many that it makes me think that he might end up being Scotland’s top scorer.

At the moment that is definitely the part of his game that we need the most.

Scotland have not really offered much of a threat so far at Euro 2024 and McTominay gives us the best chance of doing that on Sunday, in a game we probably need to win to reach the last 16.

Lots of managers have hard luck stories about players that get away and McTominay is one of those for me because I tried to sign him for West Ham last summer.

It was always going to be hard to replace Declan Rice with any one player when he joined Arsenal, and we were not planning to do that – we wanted to bring in a couple of midfielders instead.

We bought two really good players in James Ward-Prowse and Edson Alvarez, so that was the cover, but Scott was certainly one of the players we had a big interest in as well.

He is a good all-round midfielder, but to me his best attributes are arriving in the area, or the edges of it, at the right time to score or make some chances.

McTominay was a player who I felt I needed at the time, but we didn’t quite get it over the line and he went on to score a lot of big goals for Manchester United last season instead.

We’ve already seen how dangerous McTominay is at this tournament. I know it was deflected, but he scored a really good goal against Switzerland and then had a late volley blocked as well.

But of course there is a balance to be had between his attacking and defensive play. He can do the other side of things well too and in Wednesday’s draw with Switzerland, he was given the job of picking up Granit Xhaka.

On commentary, we did not talk about Xhaka much on the night, compared to in their opening game when he had been so influential against Hungary.

So, credit to McTominay for doing that, and I felt his stature and his presence played a big part.

It is possible he might be given a similar job to deal with Hungary’s Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai, another player who has impressed me a lot.

Szoboszlai was a player I was aware of before he came to the Premier League in 2023 – I watched him when he was with Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig.

You can see with a lot of the players at the Red Bull clubs that there is a sort of philosophy there of pressing and energy, and we saw it on Friday from the Austrian team who have got several of them in their squad.

We seem to be seeing that style being bred in quite a few of their players in terms of what they have been trained to do.

Maybe it is the Red Bull model to have players with brilliant energy, but it is a great thing for anyone to have.

Szoboszlai arrived at Liverpool with that built in and he offers it to Hungary too. He is a good footballer but he has got an incredible engine – he is a physical player, but also a great runner who can cover lots of distance as well.

He adapted well to the Premier League and when West Ham played Liverpool last season, he was able to get forward and get in the box.

He is a powerful boy and it is going to be difficult for Scotland to pin him down.

Like I say, McTominay could be given that job, because we have to be careful not to be too open. Hungary’s performance against Germany showed how tough this game will be.

Nevertheless, we will have to go for it as well, which is why I still think we need to use him in a different way, higher up the pitch.

Callum McGregor, John McGinn and Billy Gilmour offer all sorts of other things but McTominay, with his height, is the one who can probably get on the end of a few balls into the Hungary area.

I’d love to see him arrive at the right spot at the right time to put one of them away.

David Moyes was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan in Berlin.