Scotland will meet with their Euro 2012 opponents later this month to agree dates for their upcoming qualification games. The national team was drawn against Spain, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Liechtenstein at Sunday’s draw in Warsaw for the campaign which will kick off in the autumn.

New Scotland manager Craig Levein and Scottish Football Association chief executive Gordon Smith were in attendance at the draw. A meeting to agree the dates will take place in Madrid on Friday, February 19 as the group’s top ranked team traditionally plays host.

Scheduling can be an important part of the qualification process as teams look to avoid playing at the end of a long season or before their domestic programme kicks off. In addition, climate can play a part with few sides wanting to play in the height of summer or in the middle of an Eastern European winter.

Levein said that he felt Scotland could get a schedule that suited him as the draw had put the national team in one of the smaller qualification groups.

“I certainly think it will benefit us [being in a group of five] with regard to getting the dates organised,” the manager said.

“When you’ve only got eight games to organise rather than ten then it should be a little bit easier to organise.”

SFA chief executive Smith has previous experience of the negotiations, having helped organise the unsuccessful World Cup 2010 campaign. He said that every team would be looking to give themselves the best possible chance and it could be that the governing body would have to step in to finalise the dates.

“It won't be easy because fixtures meetings are very difficult,” he explained. “At the end of the day, if people don't agree on the fixtures that you want, and you don't agree with them, you just go back to Uefa and say 'we're not agreeing to these' and then Uefa give you the fixtures. Sometimes that can be tougher when they do that.

“It's going to be hard. Craig and I will sit down in the next few days and get an idea of what he would like from the fixtures and how he would like the games planned out.

“It's down to how well the team does when the fixture comes along. There are certain things such as looking at weather conditions at certain times of year. When I went to the last fixtures meeting, I had planned, having spoken to three previous Scotland managers, to try and avoid playing in June, which we did.

“That was agreed that was a good idea when it happened but when the results didn't go our way, people started to bring up the fixtures as a possible. I didn't think it particularly was a problem.”