Kyle Walker-Peters happy to ‘prove people wrong’ after England call-up

Kyle Walker-Peters will always have Barcelona. “Whenever people ask me about that, I talk about it as the best and worst experience I had,” says the Southampton full-back, who is in the England squad for the first time, preparing for the friendlies against Switzerland and Ivory Coast.

Walker-Peters was a 21-year-old Tottenham hopeful in December 2018 when he was thrust into the club’s final Champions League group game at the Camp Nou. It did not start well and he was at fault when Ousmane Dembélé opened the scoring in the seventh minute.

At which point Walker-Peters could have gone under. Instead, he dug deeper, using the setback as fuel and growing into the tie, playing his part as Spurs came back to draw 1-1 and advance to the knockout rounds. It is what he does, his career so far defined by an ability to respond in adversity.

Walker-Peters had begun the Under-20 World Cup in 2017 as an unused substitute but he finished it as the starting left-back in the England team that lifted the trophy. He could not establish himself as a Premier League player at Spurs; he has done so at Southampton. He was dropped by the then England Under-21 manager, Aidy Boothroyd, for the European Championship in March last year, despite being a regular for him previously. He is now in the senior squad.

“Barcelona was an opportunity for me to realise that you’re going to make mistakes but how well can you continue to play?” Walker-Peters says. “I remember Harry Kane and Danny Rose coming over to me after the mistake and saying: ‘You’re playing well, just keep going.’ That gave me so much confidence and I ended up playing a really good game.”

Young players will make errors. It is often a question of whether they will be allowed to make them