THE Scotland women’s football squad, led by head coach Anna Signeul, which travelled to Cyprus yesterday for the annual 12-nation Cyprus Cup tournament, is embarking on a journey which, if everything goes to plan, will lead to the 2017 Uefa European Championship in the Netherlands.

The four-game trip also coincides with the tenth anniversary of Signeul’s appointment in March, 2005. She recently signed a further two-year contract, giving her a length of tenure almost unheard of in international football. If that longevity is testament to the value placed on her work by the Scottish FA, this time the pressure to deliver – in the shape of Euro 2017 qualification – will be very much greater.

The 53-year-old, who enjoyed success with national youth sides in her native Sweden before coming to Scotland, has guided her adopted country to three major championship play-offs. Although the margin between success and failure could not have been narrower against Russia and Spain for the 2009 and 2013 Euros, the most recent attempt, for this summer’s World Cup in Canada, was an anti-climax; after a splendid qualifying campaign the Scots played well below their best in the two games against Holland.

To put these play-off eliminations in context, however, it is necessary to go back to 2005 when Signeul was appointed to replace another formidable figure in women’s football, Vera Pauw. Whereas the Dutch coach placed her emphasis almost entirely on the national team, Signeul’s aim was to build the game upwards from its base. Scotland’s clubs were persuaded to be far more professional in their approach, increasing the frequency of training sessions for first team players and putting advanced youth development structures in place.

Thanks to Signeul, Scotland’s women had a performance strategy up and running long before it had occurred to the SFA to introduce one for men’s football. There is nothing haphazard about the country’s rise up the Fifa women’s world rankings to its current position of 21st, and nor is it any coincidence that the competition for places in the national side – only nominal when Signeul arrived – is now becoming fierce.

While qualification for the 2009 or 2013 Euros, or this summer’s World Cup, would have been a welcome bonus, the 2017 European Championship has always been Signeul’s target. Before setting off for the Cyprus Cup games against World Cup hosts Canada, Italy and South Korea — with a fourth to be determined by the outcome of the three groups — Signeul said: “This time I am confident we will qualify for the Euro finals.”

Last month Scotland beat Northern Ireland 4-0 in a low-key friendly in Belfast, but the shape of the side which will contest the Euro qualifying campaign is likely to be determined over the next ten days. All three group games are against higher-ranked sides, and Signeul is certain to use this testing environment to decide if the younger players are ready to dislodge long-established personnel, some of whom have well over 100 caps.

The listless performances against Holland last October,though there were mitigating circumstances involving match fitness, strongly suggest that Signeul needs to freshen up her side ahead of the Euro qualifying campaign, which gets under way in September.

Previous fringe players, such as Caroline Weir, who plays for Arsenal, and Lana Clelland, who has moved to the Italian club Bari, are the most likely candidates for regular places. Among the younger players, Hibs full-back Kirsty Smith and Glasgow City’s exciting winger Fiona Brown can expect to be given every opportunity to prove that they, too, are worthy of places in the starting line-up.

Signeul has decided to switch from a 4-4-2 formation to 4-2-3-1, and, as has been the case for some time now, the key player will be Seattle Reign’s Kim Little. The attacking midfielder was the best player in the most recent American National Women’s Soccer League season and is among the very best in Europe.

It is, in fact, a measure of the improvements Signeul has instigated that so many of her squad are now professionals. The players she inherited in 2005 were amateurs, with corresponding levels of fitness, but now most earn their salaries from clubs in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Italy and England.

Signeul recently admitted that she had expected to stay in Scotland for just four years when she first arrived, and that her initial experience of women’s football in this country did not encourage her to stay longer. Her brother keeps cows in Sweden, and Signeul reckons the field where they pasture was in better condition than the pitch at Dalkeith where she witnessed her first game in this country.

“I didn’t expect the state of the game to be so far behind Sweden when I arrived,” said Signeul, who has come to love Scotland despite encountering some initial prejudice and even hostility. She admitted. “Women’s football was a low priority. It has been tough, no doubt about it, but I have enjoyed it.”

Signeul’s overall record since launching her Scotland reign with a rare 2-1 friendly win over England in Liverpool, is 57 wins, 56 defeats and 20 draws. If that appears a modest return, it is because Signeul’s policy is not to embellish her own record with facile wins in friendly matches, but instead to play higher-ranked sides whenever possible so that her players can learn from the experience and raise their standards.