KIERAN FREEMAN has already had a brush with footballing fame and fortune.
The 14-year-old defender, who plays his youth-team football at Dundee United, has a regular invite to Manchester United training camps during his holidays, spending one session at Carrington in the exalted company of Brooklyn Beckham and his father David.
United - Dundee that is - would be due a development fee possibly stretching into six figures should both parties choose to make that a permanent arrangement on his 16th birthday, but for now the teenager has his sights set on making a name for himself in the Victory Shield, the annual competition between the home nations at Under-16 level.
Scotland won last year's edition outright for the first time in 15 years, with one of the star turns a United player. Winger Ali Coote shot to prominence with two goals against Northern Ireland, and Freeman is hoping to do likewise when the Scots take on the same opponents at St Mirren Park tonight.
"I remember watching it last year," said Freeman. "I watched the Northern Ireland game when Ali Coote scored twice. Because he's a left-sided midfielder I've played against him a lot in training and he still talks about it. He's been on the fringe of the first team this year, part of the development squad, and it shows what can happen if you do well in the Victory Shield.
"United will happily put youth players into the first team if you're good enough. We'll try our hardest to keep the shield and hopefully I'll get picked again to play next year."
In addition to his periodic trips to Lancashire, Freeman has had access to the best football upbringing available. Another graduate of Ian Cathro's coaching clinics, alongside the likes of Ryan Gauld, John Souttar and Craig Wighton, the 14-year-old is the only current attendee in the squad of an SFA performance school, commuting from the village of Inverbervie, near Stonehaven, to St John's Academy in Dundee each day. There he trains under the watchful eye of former Dundee United skipper, not to mention Northern Ireland internationalist, Iain Jenkins.
"I've come on a lot as a player since I started attending the Performance School at St John's," said Freeman. "I get up at 5am and get the train to school, go into the gym before school, then do my normal classes with a session over lunch. After school I train with United and head home for around 7pm. I try to get my homework done on the train. It's hard work but it will be worth it if I make it.
"I worked with Ian Cathro at Dundee United and he was going to be the Performance School coach until he left for Portugal," Freeman added. "He was different. His training paid off. It was all technical stuff and the way he looks at the game gives you a different perspective."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article