Scotland manager Gordon Strachan says he made "a huge mistake" by agreeing to play Euro 2016 hosts France just days before the tournament.

Strachan's side gave a woeful performance as they were beaten 3-0 in a friendly last weekend.

And, rather than learning anything useful about his squad, Strachan admits the defeat heaped fresh misery on Scotland players already struggling to come to terms with their failure to qualify for the competition.

Euro 2016 kicks off on Friday when France face Romania and, writing in the Daily Record, Strachan said: "At this point I'm going to hold my hands up here and admit I made a huge mistake in taking the team to France last week for that friendly in Metz.

"All it did was give us a taste of what is about to come before having to walk away from it.

"I'm now struggling to work out what I was thinking about when I took that game on.

"I've got to take responsibility for that because I hoped our players would enjoy it but, when faced with the reality of it, they realised there's a huge tournament about to begin and we're not welcome at it.

"We saw the excitement of the people over there, the security -- the whole enormous scale of the thing -- and it made us feel even more miserable about ourselves.

"So that maybe wasn't the cleverest thing to do."