Luis Binks: From Tottenham to Scotland's National Team
Luis Binks sits in the shade of the palm trees at La Manga, Scotland’s temporary base this week, 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, a vacancy opening up at the heart of Sebastien Pocognoli’s defence since Grant Hanley and John Souttar were moved on after the Belgian replaced Steve Clarke.
A Dunbar grandparent gives him his Scottish link. His story does the rest.
Binks is one of eight uncapped players in Pocognoli’s first squad, a wave of fresh faces and fresh backstories. His begins in north London, in the academy corridors of Tottenham, and then takes a sharp left turn across the Atlantic.
He thinks back to Montreal, to the winter of 2020. He was 18, newly arrived at Montreal Impact in MLS, desperate to get out of the youth bubble.
“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 non‑negotiable. Real games, real pressure. “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.”
The test came with a twist. He signed in February. By March, the world had shut down.
His manager was Thierry Henry. Not the YouTube highlights version, but the real thing, pacing around an empty city as Covid closed everything.
Binks hadn’t even found an apartment. He was in a hotel, Henry in another. Then his hotel closed. The club suggested moving him to a place out by the airport. Isolated. Soulless.
“It felt like prison, almost,” he says.
Then his phone rang. Henry on the line. A simple offer that turned into something unforgettable.
“Do you want to move to where I am? You can go on the other floor.”
The Ritz-Carlton in downtown Montreal. Five stars, 129 rooms. Two guests: Thierry Henry and a teenage centre-half from Tottenham’s academy.
Days blurred into a strange routine. Binks would go out for runs in the morning through the quiet streets. Henry would be there when he left, sitting alone in reception. He would still be there when Binks came back.
“I’d spend a few hours with him, just trying to pick his brains,” he says. No crowds. No team-mates. Just a World Cup winner and a kid trying to learn.
One night, the surreal dial went up another notch. Binks was in his room, controller in hand, playing PlayStation. The phone rang again.
“Do you want to get a pizza?”
So off they went. Henry driving, Binks in the passenger seat, the pair of them roaming around a locked-down Montreal in search of a takeaway. No entourage. No fuss. Just a legend and his young defender on a late-night food run.
“I’m saying it now like it’s just anybody, but there’s a big aura around him,” Binks admits. “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 have faded at the edges, but one name has stuck with him.
Sol Campbell.
Henry talked about what made Campbell great, what separated him, what a dominant defender actually looked like. He broke it down for Binks, point by point, and showed him where he could sharpen his own game.
Those hours in the Ritz, those runs, those chats, still shape him now as he waits for a Scotland debut.
“I owe a lot to him because he gave me my first chance in senior football,” Binks says.
From empty hotel lobbies with Thierry Henry to the fight for a starting shirt under Sebastien Pocognoli, the journey has already been wild. Slovenia on Saturday could be the next chapter.
