ALEX Smith glows with an almost paternal sense of pride when he ponders the rise and rise of Stephen Kingsley. The Falkirk director of football takes a keen interest in each of the young players he has helped upon their respective pathways, not least of whom is the 22-year-old who is in the running for a remarkable competitive debut for his country against the England at Wembley.
A decision from new Swansea City manager Bob Bradley meant Kingsley was back playing alongside his former Falkirk pals Jay Fulton, Ryan Blair and Botti Biabi in the Under-23 league on Monday night, rather than the first team's meeting with Stoke City. But with Hull City's Andy Robertson out with a calf problem and Celtic's Kieran Tierney sidelined with ankle ligament damage, Smith has urged Gordon Strachan to put his trust in Kingsley when it comes to the crucial World Cup qualifying tie against England which could decide both the fate of our campaign and the long-term job prospects of the manager.
"I would have no worries at all about playing Stephen against England," said Smith, inducted on Sunday night into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. "I would play him left back or I would play him left centre back - he could possibly be the answer there. I know this is Gordon's area but I think Lee Wallace could play at left centre back for us too. He wouldn't gallop away like he does at Rangers, but he is getting to that stage of his career where it might suit him."
Recruited for Falkirk as a nine-year-old playing boys' club football in Stirling with Riverside FC, Smith knew pretty much there and then that this former Bannockburn High pupil was destined for great things, an impression which was only strengthened as he fought year on year to keep up with the other young stars in the club's academy.
Kingsley has continued to take everything in his stride in the professional ranks - even if Smith among others looked on aghast as a bit of early impetuousity saw him sent off in his home town on only his second appearance for Falkirk. It came in the 88th minute of a meeting with Stirling Albion. And the real problem was that the 16-year-old had only climbed off the substitutes' bench in the 86th minute.
"Stephen went on, gets the ball out from the goalie, and plays it up to the striker - who loses possession," recalls Smith. "They got it, hit it back to where Stephen is, the right winger takes possession of the ball and Stephen comes clattering in, ball, man, everything, right out onto the track. The referee produces a red card. And he was only a minute on the park, in his home town, with his mother, his faither, his granny all sitting in the stand."
Despite such early trauma, Kingsley is said to have a great temperament for the sport, one honed from long hours soaking up football from his dad Tony, who now heads up Falkirk's junior academy. That is one reason why Smith feels that walking out at Wembley wouldn't faze him. Smith visited the Emirates in person in March when he played the full 90 minutes in front of 60,000 fans, inflicting a 2-1 win on an Arsenal side including players like Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez who were chasing the Barclays Premier League title at the time. The player's only Scotland appearance to date came in the 3-0 friendly defeat to France in Metz ahead of the World Cup.
"He would be nervous like anybody else," said Smith. "But he has a good temperament. He has been to the Emirates and played well when Swansea weren't supposed to get any kind of result at all. Kingsley played from the start, outstanding he was. Your man Thierry Henry gave him [Kingsley] the biggest boost when he spoke about him afterwards when he spoke about him on TV and said he was one of the best young players he has seen in that position. He has got that kind of ability.
"He is a Stirling boy and I am so proud of him," Smith added "He has come through the pathway and it is a difficult thing, going from year to year and proving you are good enough to stay in. Then you get into the first team and under Steven Pressley we were getting into the semi-finals of the cup with Falkirk with a team whose average age was 22. Since he has gone down there, it [the fee Swansea paid Falkirk for him] will be maybe £500,000 now, but if they made him available for transfer now, it would probably be something like £5m. A wee bit of that would drop through the letter box as well."
While Robertson and Tierney's misfortune has led to Kingsley's opportunity with the national team, it is worth noting that the comparison between these three young left backs is nothing new. Smith recalls expressly declining the chance to acquire Robertson from Queen's Park as he felt that bringing him in would stifle Kingsley's development.
"Craig Robertson, who has now joined Rangers, and I were sitting in that stand [Hampden] one day, watching Queen's Park play," said Smith. "We saw this wee boy at left back [Robertson] and what a player he was. We had a chance to maybe get him out at some stage but we decided we couldn't bring him to Falkirk because we had Stephen Kingsley, who has just broken into the first team at 17, and the boy following him up was Liam Dick.
"So we didn't follow him up," he added. "Then Dundee United signed him two or three weeks later. He was always going to be a really good player, that kid. But that was the reason. It shows you how much we thought of Kingsley and he is a fantastic laddie into the bargain."
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