Luis Binks' Unusual Journey to Scotland Debut
Luis Binks sits under the palm trees at La Manga, Scotland’s temporary base, and laughs at how strange his route here has been. At 25, the Brondby captain is on the brink of a first Scotland cap against Slovenia on Saturday, one of eight uncapped players thrown into Sebastien Pocognoli’s new era.
A place has opened up at the heart of the defence since Grant Hanley and John Souttar were moved aside after Pocognoli replaced Steve Clarke. Binks, eligible through a grandparent from Dunbar, has stepped into that gap with intent. His journey to this point, though, veers a long way from the usual academy-to-first-team script.
He goes back to early 2020, to Montreal and the MLS. He was 18, leaving behind years at Tottenham.
“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 in the sand. No more underage fixtures, 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.”
Testing himself meant landing in Canada, at Montreal Impact, with Thierry Henry as his manager. A dream move, on paper. Then the world shut down.
“I'd signed in February and then we went into Covid lockdown in March,” Binks says. “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.”
The club’s solution was a hotel by the airport. Functional. Isolated. “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 the phone rang.
“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 bolt-hole with 129 rooms. At that point, it housed exactly two guests: Henry and Binks.
“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 scenes are almost cinematic. Empty lobby. One of the greatest forwards of his generation, alone with a teenage centre-half desperate to learn.
“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. “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 how unusual it sounds. “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 conversations blur with time, yet one name sticks. “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.”
For a young centre-half, that kind of education is priceless. So is the faith Henry showed in him when senior football still lay ahead.
“I owe a lot to him because he gave me my first chance in senior football,” Binks says.
From a deserted Ritz in Montreal to the fight for a Scotland debut in Spain, the path has been anything but straight. Now he stands a game away from turning that strange, stop-start journey into an international career.
