Normally it’s club form that gets you back into international contention, but Leigh Griffiths could buck that trend over the next nine days as he goes away with Steve Clarke’s Scotland squad.
The Scots have a mouth-watering Euro 2020 playoff clash against Serbia to come away from home on Thursday night. That will then be followed by trips to Slovakia and Israel as they look to wrap up top spot in their Nations League group and bag another play-off for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Meanwhile, Griffiths just can’t find a solution to being frozen out of the starting XI at Parkhead. He’s come on in several matches now this season where he’s made a difference and saved the manager’s skin.
Starring performances against St Johnstone and Aberdeen come to mind as Griff’s energy and goal threat helped turn games around. He was even head and shoulders above his team-mates when he came on and scored against Sparta Prague on Thursday night too. The only difference was it wasn’t enough on the night.
But despite these impressive individual cameos, Lennon still prefers the likes of Odsonne Edouard and Albian Ajeti to Griff. So much so that the Scotland international has started only started one game all season.
Griffiths can’t complain too much of course, that’s just the way it is. When you have a talent as highly-valued as Edouard and a new £5million striker in Ajeti (Sky Sports), the manager is always going to do his best to utilise both regularly.
However, Griff’s time away with Scotland can give him a chance to do something his other strike rivals won’t be doing – firing their nation to international glory.
Griffiths’ incredible Scotland opportunity awaits
If Griffiths can manage goals against the likes of Serbia to end the country’s 22-year wait to make a major finals, it’ll put his stock into a place it hasn’t been at since his brace against England back in the summer of 2017. It’ll go even higher if he fires Scotland to Nations League success in Slovakia or Israel too.
Being a star performer in fixtures of this calibre could make him next to undroppable at Parkhead too. If he’s getting himself the level of positive press that an impact in these fixtures would attract, Lennon simply couldn’t justify not playing him more regularly.
It’s the perfect opportunity for Griffiths to really kick-start his season, and more importantly, give his Celtic career the boost it could desperately do with at this current moment in time.
Ajeti will be staying at home after not being picked for Switzerland. Edouard and Patryk Klimala, meanwhile, will be away with France and Poland at under-21 level respectively. Not one of them can say that they’ll be achieving what Griffiths is if he makes himself an international hero this week.
Of course, I’m not blind. Clarke is highly unlikely to start Griffiths on Thursday. Not when he has such incredible talents like Oli McBurnie and Lyndon Dykes. Hopefully you detected the sarcasm in that comment. Because even though we know Griffiths offers a lot more than both of the players mentioned, Clarke has shown that he has his favourites.
So it’s more likely to be the case that Griffiths has to play a similar role as he does at Celtic. He’ll have to patiently wait on the bench and look to take any opportunity that comes his way.
However, given these games against Serbia, Slovakia, and Israel will likely be extremely close, Clarke will almost certainly be tempted to throw the Celtic hitman on at some stage. Rotation is almost certain in what’s a massive triple-header for the country.
And if our man can come up with the goods and make himself a star, it could be exactly what he needs to fire himself back into the starting XI at Parkhead.
In other news, a player who left Celtic in 2014 finally looks to have settled in Scotland after signing a new contract.
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