Callum Wilson ready to fulfil ‘cage’ dreams of playing for England

The Bournemouth striker missed his daughter’s birth to regain his fitness and make a childhood fantasy a reality

Callum Wilson was initially insistent. A senior international debut awaits against the United States, with the striker suggesting he would fulfil the pledge made in his youth that he would “never go to Wembley until I played for England”. But that actually needed qualifying. He had been present as a fan, cheering from the sidelines as Coventry won the Checkatrade Trophy last season. And then, of course, there were all those goals he had scored and celebrated with gusto in the national arena as a kid. Not that those feats are recorded.

To clarify, the young Wilson and his friends, some future teammates at Coventry’s academy, had named the local cages or the patch of tarmac around the garages on the estate as their ‘Wembley’. It was there he visualised what may now come to pass against the USA on Thursday night. “As a youngster, playing around with your friends, you’d always re-enact playing at Wembley, things like that,” he said. “It’d be one versus one, where you’d try and score to get through to the next round. Yeah, it was competitive, but even then I was hoping that, one day, it would happen for real.

Continue reading...