Scott Brown has tipped Arsenal defender Kieran Tierney to be ‘one of the stars’ of this summer’s European Championships.
The Gunners left-back has been one of our most consistent performers since making the switch from Celtic in the summer of 2019, with the odd injury the only negative to take from his time with the club.
Tierney is ready to play a key role for Scotland as they take to battle this summer, and is also set to take on team-mate Bukayo Saka in the group stages, with the two British sides to battle it out in the second group game on Friday.
Brown is tipping Kieran to prove himself to the whole of Europe as a standout for the tournament however.
Brown told readers of his column with the Daily Record: “I look at Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson and just think ‘Wow!’.
“Steve Clarke deserves some credit for working out how to get them both into the same team but, oh my God, are these two making it work for him.
“Everyone knows how much I love KT. But he’s taken his game to a whole new level over the last couple of years. I’d go as far as to say he could be one of the stars of the entire tournament.
“You don’t see many other centre-backs overlapping their own full-backs and running beyond the strikers but that’s how KT has played this role.
“He’s basically a centre-back who plays like a winger.
“In all my time as a player I’ve never known anyone with his energy – he can run all day – but it’s his turn of pace over three or four yards that does the real damage.
“This tourney could take him into a different stratosphere and I’ll be delighted if it does because you couldn’t meet a better lad.
“He’s got the world at his feet but he carries his boots in a Tesco bag. That sums KT up in a nutshell. He just loves playing football.
“It was his dream to play for Celtic and Scotland – he did both before he was even 20.
“And now that he’s getting even stronger, there’s no limit to what he can achieve and how high he can go.
“But he’s not the only top talent in our team. Far from it.
“There’s competition for places all over the pitch and I can’t say that was the case during my own time in the camp.
“We also have a manager clever enough to come up with a system that gets the very best out of all of them.”
I don’t think there is a single Arsenal fan who would be shocked if Tierney was able to play a starring role for Scotland this summer, and I’m certainly expecting him to be Scotland’s main man.
He will need some help however if he is going to reach the knockout rounds, which could well hamper his bid to be one of the players of the tournament.
Could Tierney earn himself a bigger following this summer?
Patrick
