SCOTLAND coach Scot Gemmill has called on his players to embrace the daunting prospect of starting the next European Under-21 qualifying campaign with games against Holland and England.

The young Scots missed out on this summer’s finals in Poland and the draw for the 2019 qualifiers saw them placed in the same section as two of European football’s top nations as well as Ukraine, Latvia and Andorra. Part of the preparations for the qualifiers, which start in September with a home game against the Dutch, followed by a trip down south, is a friendly against Estonia at the Paisley 2021 stadium on Tuesday.

Scotland have not qualified for the finals since 1996. Gemmill said: “They are going to be fantastic games to be involved in.

They are very difficult games, of course, and the opposition are going to be at a really high level.

“We knew we are going to face teams from pots A, B and C but we’ve probably got some of the tougher teams out of those pots and we have to really embrace it, embrace the challenge.”

Cameron Ballantyne, on loan from Dundee United at Montrose, is a doubt for the Estonia game with an ankle injury.