Luis Binks: From Montreal to Scotland Debut

Luis Binks leans back among the palm trees at La Manga and laughs at the madness of it all. At 25, on the brink of a Scotland debut, he still can’t quite believe the route that’s brought him here.

The Brondby centre-half, now captain in Denmark, has arrived in Sebastien Pocognoli’s first Scotland squad with the door suddenly wide open. Grant Hanley and John Souttar have been moved on since the Belgian replaced Steve Clarke, leaving a vacancy at the heart of the defence. Binks, eligible through a grandparent from Dunbar, is one of eight uncapped players called into this new-look group.

New manager. New faces. New stories. His might be the wildest.

Early Career

It starts in Montreal, four years ago. February into March 2020. Binks is 18, freshly out of Tottenham’s academy and desperate to escape the bubble.

“I'd been at Tottenham since I was very young, but I just wanted to go and play first-team football,” he recalls. That was the line he drew for himself. No more under-23s, no more waiting. “That was my biggest thing, to not get caught up in the whole youth system. I feel that if you get caught in that, it's not real football. I wanted to test myself.”

So he went to MLS. To Montreal Impact. To a dressing room run by Thierry Henry.

Then the world shut down.

“I'd signed in February and then we went into Covid lockdown in March,” Binks says. He hadn’t even found an apartment. Just a teenager in a foreign city, living out of a hotel room. “I was in one hotel and Thierry was in another. The one I was in was then shut down.”

The club’s solution? Move him to an airport hotel. Isolation on the outskirts.

“He was staying at the Ritz on his own. They wanted to move me to a hotel by the airport and I didn't want to go because there was nothing there. It felt like prison, almost.”

The Call

Then came the phone call that changed everything.

“One day I get a call from him, saying: ‘Do you want to move to where I am? You can go on the other floor’.”

The Ritz-Carlton in Montreal is a five-star hideaway with 129 rooms. During lockdown, it had just two residents: Thierry Henry and a teenage centre-half trying to make his way in the game.

“I'd go for runs in the morning and he'd be sat in the reception on his own,” Binks remembers. “When I'd get back from the run, he'd still be sat there. I'd spend a few hours with him, just trying to pick his brains.”

The image is almost absurd. One of the greatest forwards of his generation, killing time in an empty luxury hotel. A young defender, soaking up every minute.

“I remember one night I was sat in my room just playing PlayStation and he rings me and goes, ‘do you want to get a pizza?’,” Binks says. So off they went. “There's me and him driving around Montreal looking for a pizza. It's a bit surreal, but that was how it was.”

He tells it casually now, but he knows exactly who he was sitting beside.

“I'm saying it now like it's just anybody, but there's a big aura around him. I was nervous at the time, but I asked him who's the best defender he's played with and against and why and it was a good time.”

The details of those long conversations have blurred with the years, but one name has stayed sharp in his mind.

“It's a bit of a blur now, but I always remember him talking about Sol Campbell and just saying what made him great and how I could improve as a defender.”

The lessons stuck. The opportunity did, too.

“I owe a lot to him because he gave me my first chance in senior football.”

From empty corridors in a locked-down Ritz to the sun and scrutiny of La Manga, Binks now stands a game away from pulling on a dark blue shirt for the first time, chasing a debut against Slovenia with the voice of Henry still echoing in his head.