The England Under-19s team that will compete for the European Championship crown is packed with exhilarating talent from Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Borussia Dortmund’s 17-year-old winger and the youngest player in the squad, to Samuel Iling-Junior, a forward on the books of Juventus, but none have made more league starts than the 18-year-old Alex Scott, a fixture for Bristol City in the Championship last season. Scott, a punchy and deceptively robust midfielder, represents something of an outlier given that only he, Ronnie Edwards of Peterborough and Daniel Jebbison of Sheffield United are contracted to a club outside the top tiers.
Scott, whose leaping header against Italy on Tuesday helped England into Friday’s final against Israel in Slovakia, joined City at 16 from his hometown club Guernsey FC, where he became the eighth-tier team’s youngest-ever player. Guernsey’s manager, Tony Vance, alerted Brian Tinnion, now Bristol City’s academy director, and Scott was handed a trial, in which he scored the perfect hat-trick in a friendly at Yate Town. He has since effectively been fast-tracked through the Under-18s and Under-23s and into the first team last August.
