Luis Binks: From Tottenham to Scotland's New Hope

Luis Binks leans back in his chair, palm trees swaying behind him at Scotland’s temporary base in La Manga, and starts talking. Every footballer has a story. His sounds like a fever dream.

He is 25 now, captain of Brondby, and on the verge of a first Scotland cap against Slovenia on Saturday. A vacancy has opened at the heart of Sebastien Pocognoli’s defence since Grant Hanley and John Souttar were cut loose after the Belgian replaced Steve Clarke. Binks, eligible through a grandparent from Dunbar, is one of eight uncapped players in this new-look squad.

New manager. New faces. New tales.

His begins with a leap of faith. February 2020, Montreal Impact, MLS. He was 18, walking away from the comfort of Tottenham’s academy and into the unknown.

"I'd been at Tottenham since I was very young, but I just wanted to go and play first football," he recalls. That was the obsession. Not contracts, not prestige. Minutes. "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 crossed the Atlantic. And landed under the command of Thierry Henry.

Within weeks, the world shut down.

"I'd signed in February and then we went into Covid lockdown in March," Binks explains. He hadn’t even found a place to live. No apartment, no base. Just a hotel room and a new manager he barely knew.

"I was in one hotel and Thierry was in another. The one I was in was then shut down."

Montreal went quiet. Streets emptied. The club scrambled to relocate him.

"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."

Then his phone rang.

"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.'

Where he was, was the Ritz-Carlton. Five stars. 129 rooms. And, as it turned out, just two guests.

Henry. And a teenage centre-half trying to make sense of his new life.

"I'd go for runs in the morning and he'd be sat in the reception on his own," Binks says. "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, marooned in a luxury hotel, killing time in an empty lobby. A kid from Tottenham jogging past, then sitting down to talk defending.

"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?'"

So off they went. No entourage. No cameras. Just Henry and Binks, driving around a locked-down Montreal, hunting for a takeaway that was still open.

"It's a bit surreal, but that was how it was," Binks says. "I'm saying it now like it's just anybody, but there's a big aura around him. I was nervous at the time."

He pushed through the nerves. He asked questions. Proper ones.

"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 the conversations have blurred with the years, but one name stuck.

"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."

Those evenings in the Ritz, those runs past an isolated Henry in reception, helped shape the player now sitting under Spanish sunshine, waiting on a first Scotland cap.

"I owe a lot to him because he gave me my first chance in senior football," Binks says.

From a deserted five-star hotel in Montreal to the fight for a starting place in Pocognoli’s Scotland, it is a strange, looping journey. The next chapter might begin on Saturday.