Of all the players to feature in England's 4-2 defeat against Sweden in 2012, Steven Caulker has had a more interesting career path than most.
Caulker was making his England debut at the Rasunda Stadium, and his goal late in the first half put Roy Hodgson's team ahead after Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Danny Welbeck had exchanged early goals. However, three more from Ibrahimovic - including an iconic overhead kick - gave the Swedes victory.
At the time, Caulker was establishing himself at Tottenham after an impressive season on loan at Swansea City. A decade later, though, he is playing top-flight football in a third different national league, while also earning international caps for a second different country.
"A target of mine was wanting to make my England debut before I was 21," Caulker said after his debut. "I managed to scrape in just before my 21st birthday so I am delighted with that. But to get a goal as well, I was delighted.
"I felt I learnt a lot especially against a world class striker and they were superb finishes from him. His fourth goal was the best I've seen in my career. It was a good experience and definitely a learning curve."
Sadly for Caulker, though, he would not add to that one senior England cap. Nor would he remain at Spurs that much longer, moving to newly-promoted Cardiff City in 2013 in search of regular first team football.
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After suffering successive relegations from the Premier League, with Cardiff and then QPR, Caulker joined Southampton on loan. A move to the south coast had helped Ryan Bertrand earn a breakthrough in England colours, and at the time of the move he was aiming to do the same.
“Loads of England players have come through here or joined here and done really well so it was a no-brainer in joining the club," Caulker said. It’s an exciting move and one with plenty of promise and they produce a lot of good English talent which is good to see.
“When the phone call came, I wasn’t going to hang around. I knew it was a great opportunity especially to work under the manager.”
The move was cut short in January, though, and Caulker spent the second half of the 2015-16 season on loan at Liverpool. He was one of Jurgen Klopp's first signings for the Reds, but returned to QPR without earning a permanent return to the top flight.
"We looked for Premier League experience, we looked for a good header of the ball because we want to press the opponent and so they have to play long balls. And we’ve found it with Steven Caulker," Klopp said.
Signed as cover after a number of injuries in the Reds' defence, Caulker started once in the FA Cup and made three substitute appearances from the bench. He left at the end of the season, though, with Joel Matip and Ragnar Klavan both arriving at Anfield.
While we did not know it at the time, this period of Caulker's career was extremely tough on a personal level. The defender would later bravely open up on his mental health struggles and gambling addiction, in the process helping to remove some of stigma around both.
"'I've sat here for years hating myself and never understood why I couldn't just be like everyone else," he told The Guardian in 2017. "This year was almost the end. I felt for large periods there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
"My way of dealing with [the pressures of football], even in the early stages of my career, was gambling. I’m an addict. I’m addicted to winning, which people say is a positive in football but certainly not when it extends to gambling.
"I’d had one last gamble and lost a hell of a lot of money in December. A last blowout. It was at that point I finally accepted I could not win; that there was no quick fix, no more daydreaming I could save the world through one good night on the roulette wheel.
"It was all a fantasy that took me away from having to feel anything. I contemplated suicide a lot in that period. A dark time."
It has been a long road back for the defender, who turns 31 in December. However, he found his path back to success by leaving the spotlight of English football.
A move to Dundee was the start, with suggestions he might switch his international allegiance to Scotland - where his grandmother was born - after impressing at Dens Park. Instead, though, a move to another country has given him a fresh taste of top-flight football, while his international career has gone in a different direction altogether.
First, the club career. He moved to Alanyaspor in January 2019, playing 85 times for the club and making his first Europa League appearance since his Southampton days as the Super Lig side faced Rosenborg in the 2020-21 group stages.
As an established starter, the Feltham-born player earned a move to giants Fenerbahce in the summer of 2021. The switch saw him join a squad containing former Premier League players such as Mesut Ozil and Enner Valencia, but he left - first on loan, and then permanently - without making a competitive appearance for the Istanbul club.
He is now playing his club football for Fatih Karagumruk, the ambitious Istanbul-based team now managed by Italian legend Andrea Pirlo. His team-mates include the likes of Fabio Borini and Kerim Frei, both of whom have Premier League experience, and he scored his first goal for the club in a victory over Hatayspor in October.
The summer move came after another big step, with Caulker playing his first international football in more than a decade. While a switch to Scotland never materialised, the former Spurs man declared for Sierra Leone ahead of January's Africa Cup of Nations.
He played all three group games in the tournament as Sierra Leone drew with Algeria and Cote d'Ivoire but went out after losing to Equatorial Guinea. Caulker has played seven further international games since, captaining the Leone Stars for the first time in a friendly victory over Liberia in March.
"I had some time to think about the possibility of playing for Sierra Leone, what it feels like, what it will look like," Caulker told BBC Africa in 2021. "I played for England at the age of 20 but since then I haven't played.
"The chance to come to Sierra Leone and play in the Nations Cup, and get behind the nation in this exciting moment, it became an easy decision to make. I am just really happy I made it."
