The secret behind Alex Scott’s rise from Guernsey to the Premier League and an England call-up

Alex Scott made his Guernsey FC debut as a second-half substitute, with an adult shirt flapping around his 16-year-old frame like a bedsheet. The opposition’s central midfielder had tattoos up to his neck and a glint in his eye as the teenager ran on to the pitch, and welcomed him to non-league with a shove. “This guy could smell blood,” remembers Guernsey manager Tony Vance. But before he could put the boot in, Scott had swivelled and taken the ball somewhere else.

This was Scott’s gift, to receive it in tight spaces with ease and make opponents look foolish. Most players of his age and talent were in academies playing on green carpets at high-tech training centres, while Scott was learning to survive in the Isthmian League South East, the eighth tier of men’s football, where midfield was essentially an escape room of sharp elbows and metal studs.

Vance watched Scott grow from a five-year old boy to a professional player, first at Bristol City as a teenager who Pep Guardiola called “unbelievable” after an FA Cup game, and now sparkling at Bournemouth in the Premier League, and he believes that six-month period playing men’s football was the making of him. Now, aged 22, Scott has earned his first senior England call-up.

“It was definitely important for me to get that chance at 16,” Scott says. “It helped massively when I first went to Bristol City because a lot of them had not played men’s football, they’d just come through the academy as scholars. I think I had that advantage over them … I was probably a bit behind on the technical stuff but it helped massively when I went into the first team at Bristol City because I’d played against men much bigger than me and stronger than me and faster than me before, so I knew ways to deal with it. I’d urge young players now to get out on loan as soon as they can to learn and understand the real world of playing men’s football.”

Scott is one part of an extraordinary family achievement with his step-sister Maya Le Tissier (no relation to Matt), the Manchester United centre-back who debuted for the Lionesses in 2022. She was the first English player from Guernsey to be selected for a major tournament, either for the men’s or women’s teams, and Scott could mimic that achievement at next year’s World Cup.

Scott was the talk of the island in football circles from an early age. He first played on the streets of the quiet housing estate where he grew up with his older brother Callum and their friends, and by five years old he already stood out.

“It was just like, ‘this kid is something else’,” remembers Darren Le Tissier, Maya’s dad, a semi-professional player himself who has coached many young players on the island. Scott’s birthday is late August, so when he joined a session run by Le Tissier aimed at the year group above, he was almost two years younger than some of the other boys, and yet he ran rings around them.

Scott was “tenacious” and never shied away from a challenge, Le Tissier says. He was clever, too. “He worked out very quickly, as Maya did playing boys’ football later on, that you need to look after yourself – to get the ball and move the ball – and perhaps not get caught on the ball because I’m going to get clattered.”

But as they grew older, things became tougher. Between the ages of around eight and 12, Scott and his half-sister would fly over to the mainland on a Friday afternoon to join up with Southampton’s academy (Le Tissier played for Hampshire) and fly back on Sunday. It was expensive and exhausting for the family, and the routine consumed their lives.

When Scott was released by Southampton aged 13, he was devastated. The official reason given was that he would never grow big enough (he is now 5ft 11in), although his complicated travel arrangements might have played a part in their thinking. “It just felt like four years of my life had been committed so much to this and for it to be blown away,” he says. “It was heartbreaking.”

It threw Scott into a spin. “Al came back and he was just a broken young lad,” says Le Tissier. “I was concerned for him.” Scott struggled at a north England trials event that summer and departed in tears. “I told him to take the summer off, forget football. Go back to the island, go to the skate park, go to the beach, go do things you have missed.”

It was regenerative and when he returned, he soon recaptured his spark on the ball playing for Le Tissier’s old team, St Martins. Guernsey FC took him on and the adults made their young prodigy feel like one of their own on their regular away trips, so that he had the confidence to twist opponents into existential crisis just as he did with his older teammates in training.

‘He was too good,” recalls manager Vance, and after that debut aged 16 the players demanded he started every game. Guernsey had some links with Bristol City and the Championship the club gave Scott a trial. “Thankfully I scored a hat-trick,” he smiles. “I knew at that point I was gonna get signed.”

He has had to overcome lengthy injuries but when Scott has played, he has risen to every challenge at club level and on the international stage. He won both the Under-19s’ Euros in 2022 and this summer’s Under-21s’ Euros, where he formed a formidable partnership with Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson in midfield. They may link up again this week for the senior team.

Scott brings something unique, what he calls the “islanders’ mentality” – “fearless” is how he describes it. “It’s hard to get to the mainland and be able to play, so we take our opportunities when they come around.”

He is one of a handful of players from Guernsey who have recently signed professional contracts in the Football League, marking a rare flurry of successful exports. The world of football scouting seems to have touched every blade of grass in every continent on the planet, so that prodigious 10-year-olds in Nicaragua are pinging radars across Europe’s top recruitment departments. And yet there might be a source of untapped potential right under the Premier League’s nose.

On an island of 60,000 people, spanning six miles from coast to coast across its middle, talent can’t slip through the net. When it gleams, everyone sees it.

“It’s our biggest hindrance because we’re stuck here and young players miss out on academy development,” says Guernsey manager Vance. “But it’s also our biggest protection, because nobody knows what they’re like. Nobody knows anything about them, so we just continue to look after them, and then we top it off by putting into our men’s team environment.”

Scott graduated from that particular school and has flown at every stage: too good for Bristol City, too good for the Championship, so he was signed for £25m by Bournemouth. Now he is starting every week, gliding through Premier League midfields on the ball and relentlessly harrying opponents to give it back.

“He deserves his chance,” said Thomas Tuchel this week, ahead of what is the penultimate camp before England’s World Cup squad is announced. What a chance it is. Six years after his non-league debut, Scott is expected to make his England debut. And this time the shirt will fit just nicely.