‘I think if my mates saw me taking a few cans, they’d give me a few slaps as they knew how much football meant to me’

The 22-year-old midfielder believes his journey to Scotland via London can lead to a full senior call-up after making Heimir Hallgrimsson’s recent provisional squad

A professional athlete is as open to flattery as anyone else, no matter how happy they are in their own skin.

So when news filtered through to Irish footballer Killian Phillips while he was working in the relative obscurity of a loan spell at Shrewsbury Town, in England’s third tier, that another international team were keen on chatting to him, his head could have been turned. Yes, his accent is pure Dublin but Phillips’ place of birth is San Diego, where he lived for the first five years of his life, which made him eligible for the States.

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