Brondby captain Luis Binks described his first Scotland call-up as “a great honour” after being named in Sebastien Pocognoli’s squad for the upcoming Nations League fixtures.
The Kent-born defender, 25, represented both England and Scotland at youth level and has enjoyed an interesting football journey that started in the Tottenham academy.
Former Montreal Impact, Bologna, Como and Coventry centre-back Binks, who qualifies for Scotland through his grandfather, has earned his call-up after excelling in Denmark over the past year.
“It’s obviously a great honour for me and my family. I think it’s different to any other sort of feeling you get within football,” he told Flashscore.
“You’re not just representing a club or anything like that. You’re representing a whole country. It’s another level.
“As a kid, you grow up wanting to play international football for a country.”
Binks was in good form leading up to the World Cup earlier this summer but he admitted making Steve Clarke’s squad for the showpiece in North America was always a long shot.
“Obviously, it was a dream of mine to go, but I wasn’t too disappointed not going to the World Cup because I knew that there were players in that squad that brought them to the World Cup,” he said.
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“I’d never been called up before, so for me to have been called up just for the World Cup would have been probably unfair on the players that had put in all the hard work beforehand.
“I knew it would have been difficult to be called up for the first time to go to a tournament, let alone a World Cup. But I’m obviously just buzzing with the fact that I’ve been called up now.”
Binks believes his move from Coventry to Denmark, where he spent time as a defensive partner of current Rangers centre-back Ben Godfrey last season, has been emphatically vindicated.
“I can’t say it’s been a bad choice because since I’ve been here I’ve been named the captain of Brondby and I’ve now been called up to Scotland,” he said.
“Brondby has obviously helped me get this opportunity, but ultimately it’s down to my performance and the help of my team-mates and the staff here that have helped me get there.
“I think we had a difficult spell after the winter period as a team, but I think I shone in that moment because we still kept quite a lot of clean sheets.
“I definitely improved playing next to Ben Godfrey; I think we had a good relationship and that was good for me personally.
“I think this year, obviously being named captain, I’ve had to take on a different role to anything I’ve had before. Some people think you just wear an armband and that’s that, but I’m learning day by day that it’s not just that. There’s a lot more that goes with it.”
