Midfielder on his first cap
Midfielder Brad Potts was rewarded for a very encouraging start to his first season as a professional on Tuesday night when he was handed a start in the England U19 friendly win over Finland at New Bucks Head.
Potts, 18, has made twelve appearances for United so far in this campaign including two starts in the last two games at Preston and Brentford.
Talking about his England experience, he said: “It still hasn’t sunk in.
“I’m obviously happy that I got to play the game but I can’t really believe that I got to make my debut for the U19 side. It’s been a good few days for me.”
“I didn’t find out I was involved until last Thursday,” he explained. “The gaffer told me he wanted to see me in his office and I couldn’t work out what it was going to be about. I thought I’d done something wrong so it was a relief then fantastic when I found out what the reason was. He just told me to go there, play the way I could and to enjoy it.”
That whirlwind feeling continued as he fitted in another good performance at Brentford before being picked up and whisked away to the new England training facility at St George’s Park in Burton.
“A driver from the FA was waiting for me at full time on Saturday so it was a case of getting showered and changed and we were off,” he told us. “The facilities at St George’s are out of this world so that was good to see. On Sunday it was a case of me doing a cool down and then we did a double session on Monday.
“It was on that afternoon that I found out I was starting. I was buzzing as soon as I was told. I never expected that to happen at all. Noel [Blake] said he wanted to have a look at me to see how I was going to cope and I was quite pleased with how it went.”
As for walking down the tunnel with an England shirt on it was, as you can probably imagine, the highlight of the evening.
“I can’t even begin to describe how good that was,” he said. “Walking out and then singing the National Anthem is something I’ll never forget.”
“I played the first half and we were told at the break that those who were playing first team football were only getting 45 minutes,” he added. “Noel Blake was quite pleased with how we played but he thought we could have done better in certain areas. International football is about grinding results out sometimes though and that’s what we did.”
“Obviously I want to be involved again,” he confirmed. “There’s a game against Denmark in February so I’ll just keep trying to play as well as I can between now and then. Hopefully that will get me selected.”
United Player subscribers can see a video interview with Brad Potts later today. For more information on United Player, and to subscribe, click HERE.
