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Malky Mackay takes interim Scotland job after Gordon Strachan exit

Malky Mackay will take interim charge of Scotland while the search for Gordon Strachan's successor begins.

Mackay, the Scottish Football Association's performance director, will oversee a friendly against Netherlands at Pittodrie on Nov. 9.

SFA chief executive Stewart Regan made the announcement at a news conference where he revealed the governing body board felt it was "time for a change'' when discussing Strachan's future on Thursday.

"Ultimately we are in a result business," Regan said. "We had a manager in place for five years coming up. He'd had two campaigns. When the board met to discuss Gordon's position after the defeats to England and Slovakia, we backed the manager, but we backed the manager on the proviso that we made the play-offs.

"We didn't reach the playoffs and we felt it was time for a new coach to give us a new impetus with emerging talent coming through the Scottish game and give us a real chance to make Euro 2020.''

Regan claimed Strachan had given no indication of whether he wanted to continue, but simply asked the SFA board to decide how they wanted to proceed.

Former Cardiff boss Mackay was a controversial appointment as performance director in December last year after being the subject of an 11-month probe into a series of text messages. And Regan gave little away on whether Mackay would be involved in the recruitment process or a candidate himself.

"Malky's the performance director,'' he said. ``He has got a big job to do and a number of challenges that he is working on at the moment.

"To be fair to Malky he has responded to the board's request. We asked him to take the team in Aberdeen and he was delighted to do so. As far as Malky is concerned, he will then focus on his performance responsibilities.

"We asked him literally in the aftermath of yesterday's decision to lead the team for one match. We haven't discussed anything further as far as the recruitment campaign is concerned.''

Meanwhile Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has said Scotland need to find a method for making the best of their technical players.

Strachan, who left his job as the national team manager on Thursday, bemoaned the country's genetic make-up and said they had a problem because other countries have bigger players.

Rodgers said: "I can see where Gordon is coming from. If you compare it to some other nations, of course you have other nations that are inherently built in a different way. If I look at my Swansea team, when we played in the Premier League, we had one player over 6ft 3in and the rest were highly gifted technical players.

"There are moments in the game when you are vulnerable, like set-pieces, to try and cope with that.

"But in my time up here, I have seen a lot of very talented Scottish players. So I think it is about finding a way for them to fit in to a systematic approach that allows them to play a technical game."

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