Luis Binks: From Tottenham to Scotland's Defense

Luis Binks leans back among the palm trees at Scotland’s temporary base in La Manga and laughs at the absurdity of it all. At 25, he is on the brink of a first Scotland cap, chasing a debut against Slovenia on Saturday. A vacancy has opened at the heart of Sebastien Pocognoli’s defence since Grant Hanley and John Souttar were ushered out after the Belgian replaced Steve Clarke.

Into that space steps Binks, the Brondby captain with a grandparent from Dunbar and a backstory that sounds more like a film script than a football CV. He is one of eight uncapped players in this new-look squad. Eight fresh faces, eight different routes to this point. His might be the strangest.

From Tottenham’s bubble to Thierry Henry’s ghost town

Binks grew up in the academy world at Tottenham, the well-worn path of promise and potential. But he walked away.

“I'd been at Tottenham since I was very young, but I just wanted to go and play first football. 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.”

That urge took him to Montreal Impact in early 2020. New continent, new league, new manager. Not just any manager, either. Thierry Henry.

He signed in February. By March, the world had shut down.

“I'd signed in February and then we went into Covid lockdown in March,” he recalls. “I hadn't yet found an apartment. I was in one hotel and Thierry was in another. The one I was in was then shut down.”

Suddenly, the teenager was stranded in a foreign city, with borders closing and a pandemic raging. The club’s solution was to move him to a hotel near the airport. He wanted no part of it.

“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.

Life at the Ritz with a legend

On the other end was Henry. The World Cup winner had an offer.

“He was staying at the Ritz on his own. 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 sanctuary with 129 rooms. For a spell in that eerie, locked-down spring, it housed just two people: Henry and a teenage centre-half from England with Scottish roots.

“I'd go for runs in the morning and he'd be sat in the reception on his own. 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 scenes sound almost fictional. Empty lobby. Silent city. One of the greatest forwards of his generation sitting alone, waiting out a pandemic. And a kid trying to absorb everything.

Then there was the night of the pizza.

“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?’ There's me and him driving around Montreal looking for a pizza. It's a bit surreal, but that was how it was.”

Binks tells it now with a casual shrug, but he knows what it meant.

“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.”

Lessons from Sol Campbell and a path to Scotland

The details of that strange, locked-down spell have started to blur, but one conversation is fixed 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.”

Those chats with Henry – about positioning, mentality, the art of defending at the highest level – have followed Binks from Montreal to Brondby and now to La Manga. They helped shape the player pushing for a place in Pocognoli’s back line.

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

From empty hotel lobbies and late-night pizza runs with a legend to the edge of a first Scotland cap, his journey has already taken some wild turns. Slovenia on Saturday could be the next one.