Five years is a long time to sit outside a national squad wondering whether the phone will ever ring again. Oli McBurnie has just found out that it does. The Hull City striker is back in the Scotland fold under new head coach Sebastien Pocognoli, and when he sat down with BBC Scotland in La Manga this week he did not pretend the wait had been easy.
"There were times when it looked like I was never going to come back," the 30-year-old said. "When I was last in the squad, I was a kid really. You think it's just going to always be like this. I probably did take it for granted a little bit."
Sixteen caps, no goals, and a lot of noise
The bare record does not flatter him. McBurnie has 16 Scotland caps and has not scored in any of them, a statistic that has followed him around and given his critics something easy to point at. He is blunt about the football side of it. "I didn't play well enough when I put on the Scotland shirt. I can hold my hands up and say that. I didn't give the best representation of me as a player or as a person and that's something that I'm here to change."
Then there is the reputation. For years he has been cast as a disruptive figure in the camp, a rumour nobody inside the set-up has ever actually stood up. "It was people on the outside putting two and two together without any substance," he said. "If you ask anyone I've ever worked with in the national set-up or at club level, I'd like to think that they'd tell you that the one thing I try and be is a very good team-mate whether I'm playing or not playing."
The video, and what came after
Part of the perception traces back to 2019, when McBurnie was a Sheffield United player and was filmed telling fellow Scot John Fleck that he hoped he would not be called up. He says the line was defensive armour rather than a genuine view. "I say things almost to protect myself from insecurities. So, being asked if I'm going to get called up for Scotland and me saying, 'I hope not', it's almost protecting myself if I don't get the call."
He rang Steve Clarke to apologise straight away and was told to apologise to the squad too, which he did, and he went on to play plenty more under Clarke. The relationship cooled later, after McBurnie phoned the then head coach ahead of the World Cup squad announcement to ask where he stood, then spoke publicly about the conversation. He was left out, and he was gutted. He will not criticise Clarke for it now, saying only that the manager "had his own reasons for what he did".
Different man, same edge
What changed the picture was form and a new man in the job. McBurnie scored 19 times for Hull last season, the most important of them a 95th-minute play-off winner against Middlesbrough that carried the club into the Premier League. He has yet to score this season but has been playing well, and he is favourite to lead the line in Ljubljana on Saturday.
He describes himself as a different person now, with two children, a fiancee and a year of living in Spain with Las Palmas behind him since his last cap. The edge, he insists, has not gone. "I don't necessarily want you to like me when I'm playing, especially if you're an opposition fan. I want you to dislike me. It means I've been a nuisance in the game." What he wants most is obvious enough. "A one-yard tap-in or one that goes in off my backside, anything to get me off the mark with my country would be incredible."
Fixture context: Oli McBurnie, 30, plays for Hull City and has 16 Scotland caps without a goal. He was recalled by new head coach Sebastien Pocognoli for Nations League matches against Slovenia, Switzerland and North Macedonia. Scotland face Slovenia at the Stadion Stozice in Ljubljana on Saturday 26 September, 14:00 BST.
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