Alex McLeish has said pitting his Scotland team against Belgium's stars will help develop the side for success against other teams.

Friday's friendly at Hampden sees the national team go up against Eden Hazard and company just days before the Nations League campaign begins with a home match against Albania.

McLeish said there was more benefit to tackling a top-ranked side than a lesser team if Scotland are to improve, and pointed to Russia as an example.

As hosts of World Cup 2018, Russia had no competitive games ahead of the tournament but played a punishing series of friendlies against Argentina, Spain, France and Brazil among others in a stretch of winless games. In the finals Stanislav Cherchesov's side progressed from their group and reached the quarter finals.

"I believe that for us to get better, we have to play the better teams," McLeish said. "And I believe that the big example of that, if you look at the World Cup, the Russians had taken on seven pretty tough games before they went to play in the finals.

"They never won a game but look at the reaction when they got to the finals themselves.

"The team had finally gelled. The coach had to take a lot of flak from these previous games and then he got fantastic results. They weren't easy games to take on and we're in a similar situation."

McLeish will have played five friendlies by the time he faces Albania and believes he has reaped the benefits of being able to bed in before the business of qualifying for Euro 2020 begins.

"I felt it gave us good preparation time, a chance to look at good individuals over a period of time, a lot of preparation," he said. "I was grateful for that time. Yes, we could have had better results on a couple of occasions but I go back to the Russian guy again: sometimes you have to go a step back to go two forward.

"I would love to see this team gelling immediately. There's no doubting their athleticism.

"We might have to run a wee bit further than the Belgians to stop their fluency but it's a privilege to try and get this team to a major finals again. That's how I feel about these preparation games: we've come to this point and it's a big point."

The manager all but confirmed that John Souttar would earn his first cap in the next week and suggested that he would make changes between Friday's friendly and Monday's competitive game.

"I believe there's enough players in the squad to play two really competitive teams," he said. "Obviously there's some new kids on the block over the last few months and they are a part of the squad now.

"We will be looking, obviously, to get a good performance level against the Belgians to try and upset them and go into the Nations League with all guns firing.

"I'm treating both games with a lot of importance but of course the Nations League game is the most important.

"We've done a wee bit of shaping this week to try to get the players to quickly gel into the formation that we believe maximises the strength of the players at our disposal.

"It can't be perfect for everybody but we certainly feel that we've got good athleticism and legs in the team and they know that they're going to have to run about quite a lot and quite a distance against the Belgians who have been playing together for a long time.

"Certainly they have a proven team and they finished third with, in my opinion, the best team at the World Cup to watch, although they didn't win it."