There was absolutely no shame in Nathaniel Atkinson getting a bit of a runaround from Kylian Mbappe at the World Cup the other night.
After all, if one of the world’s top three players - which Mbappe surely is - plays at the top of his game, there’s no right back on the planet that can live with him. And the young Hearts defender stuck to his task brilliantly, didn’t let his head go down and did plenty of good things in the game as Australia went down fighting to the French.
I really liked Atkinson’s honesty when he spoke about the experience later. No hiding, no whining, just an acceptance that when a guy like Mbappe is on song there’s not much a mere mortal can do other than dance to his tune. As he said, there’s a reason why the PSG superstar is on $200m a year and he, Atkinson, is playing for Hearts. That’s absolutely no slight on his current employers, by the way. It’s just a cold, hard truth.
I know. I’ve been there on more than a couple of occasions and while at the time it seemed like hell, chasing shadows that were there one second and gone the next, you look back on it with a sense of satisfaction that you have reached a level where you are on the same pitch as some of the very best the game has to offer.
My first taste of it came as a raw 16-year-old, thrown into a Chelsea reserve game against a West Ham side that had Joe Cole and Michael Carrick up against me in the middle of the park. Both already had growing reputations, but Cole in particular was being talked about as the best young midfielder in London, if not England. He played against me on the Monday and went on to make his first team debut two nights later on the Wednesday, so obviously the young Stevenson didn’t take too much out of his tank!
To be fair, I couldn’t get close to either of them, but as a kid I knew no fear and I was running around trying my best. And really, that’s all you can do in those situations.
That was the toughest night of my career until Spurs came to Tynecastle in the Europa League in 2011. They were sensational. They took five off us and it could have been more.
Ian Black and I were in our midfield. They had Niko Kranjcar and Rafael van der Vaart and to their left was Gareth Bale, who was running at poor Jamie Hammill all night and eventually got on the scoresheet. As did Jermain Defoe.
I remember shouting at Blackie to get closer to them, get in their faces. He looked at me and shouted, “Are you kidding?’ He might not have been that polite!
He was right. Their pace, movement and vision belonged on a different level to us and we were decent players. But afterwards all we could do in the dressing room was shake our heads and have a wry smile.
And years later, with me now being a retired player and sitting on my couch watching the World Cup, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to know I shared a pitch with someone like Bale, who is one of the greatest British players of all time.
We all have ambitions to play at the highest possible level and if you aren’t good enough to play for the elite teams, then getting the chance to play against players like that is the ultimate. That’s why Atkinson, Kyle Rowles - who had a really good game at centre back - and Cammy Devlin, whose chance will surely come for the Aussies in one of the next two games, have to embrace and enjoy every minute of these few weeks.
So many great players never get the chance to play in a World Cup, but these boys are living and breathing it. It’s also absolutely brilliant for Hearts when it comes to recruitment.
Robbie Neilson and Joe Savage can speak to players from different parts of the world, point to their Australian trio and say: ‘we helped them get to a World Cup - we can do the same for you.’ That, and hopefully the possibility of European football, can be a real carrot for a player who might have a number of options.
Talking of European football, there’s no doubt that when the ball starts rolling again Robbie will be targeting just that. They might have gone into the break in fifth place and four points behind third-placed Aberdeen, but the manager will be okay with that, considering they had the all the travelling and mental and physical stress of those Europa Conference ties to deal with, as well as a chronic injury list that should have eased a bit by the time Killie come calling on December 17. By then, his Aussie trio will be back on board as well and there’s no chance any of those lads will be wanting some time off after playing while their team-mates have had their feet up.
Atkinson, Devlin and Rowles will be buzzing from their experience. And while they’ll be delighted to not be facing the likes of Mbappe, Giroud and Griezmann, they wouldn’t have swapped their 90 minutes with them for the world.
READ NEXT:
