IN THE AFTERMATH of Wednesday night’s extra-time victory over Denmark at Wembley, the England players absorbed the adulation of their supporters during a lap of honour that was 55 years in the making.
As he joined his team-mates in expressing their appreciation to those in the stands for helping to propel an English team towards a first final since 1966, Kyle Walker removed his pair of tattered shin pads and tucked them safely into the waistband of his shorts.
The decisive moment in the semi-final win was Harry Kane’s 104th-minute goal, yet Walker is sure to attest that the shin pads have also played an essential role in his own personal journey to tomorrow evening’s European Championship decider against Italy.
“My only superstition that’s really lasted is that if I was without my shin pads, I’d find it hard to think that the game is going to go well,” the Manchester City defender said in a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph.
“It’s impossible not to have them. I’d rather lose my boots. With boots, I’ll change boots. I could wear a new pair of boots and play a game, so the first thing that’s going in my bag is my shin pads.
“Well actually, hopefully they won’t be in my bag because they might smell it out, but they will be the first thing in the kitman’s bag. They best be in there!”
The shin pads are “hanging together a bit”, by Walker’s own admission, but he insists: “They are doing okay and I will not change them. I will never change them.”
The primary years of Walker’s education in professional football were overseen by his local club, Sheffield United. He joined the Blades at the age of seven, before being recruited as a promising 19-year-old by Tottenham Hotspur.
Since a £50million transfer to Manchester City in 2017 that made him the game’s most expensive defender at the time, Walker has collected three Premier League titles, one FA Cup and four League Cups.
Six weeks on from playing in a Champions League final, his involvement in the showpiece fixture at Euro 2020 will take him to 61 senior international caps.
Such considerable success has come as no surprise to Derek Geary. A 41-year-old native of Finglas in Dublin, the light was dwindling on Geary’s playing career just as Walker began to force his way into first-team consideration at Sheffield United.
Geary last played for the club more than a decade ago, but the ex-Ireland youth international continues to be revered around Bramall Lane, where he’s fondly remembered for his contribution over the course of 133 appearances – of which 26 came in the Premier League.
“I was in the team when Kyle was a young lad coming through,” explains Geary, who has been described by Walker as his favourite Sheffield United right-back. “You could see right away that he had a lot of potential, he had a lot going for him, even though he was still very young.”
Geary actually began his professional career with Sheffield United’s local rivals. His memories of being a teenager aiming to make the grade at Sheffield Wednesday were foremost in his mind when Walker’s emergence put his place in the United team under threat.
“A lot of senior players can be resentful towards younger players when they’re coming through and trying to challenge them for their position – I experienced it myself as a kid – but the fact that I was looking to be supportive of him was something he seemed to appreciate.
“As a senior player it’s important to treat the younger players the right way. I think he would have been a ballboy at one stage when I was playing at Sheffield United. As a young kid, he would have been looking up to guys like me in the first-team. I had been in that position myself and it’s a big thing when you start to make that step-up yourself.
“When I was a kid at Sheffield Wednesday, guys like Des Walker and Andy Hinchcliffe really helped me, which meant a lot to me. I just tried to help Kyle with his game as much as I felt I could. I suppose I took him under my wing in a way that I’d like to have been treated when I was that age.
“It was clear that he was on his way to having a really good career, so offering him whatever advice I had was the right thing to do. Eventually then he was playing in the team ahead of me, which I had no problem with.”
By the time he established himself in the Sheffield United team during the 2009-10 season, Walker was wearing the same shin pads that he’ll use against Italy this weekend.
As he revealed during the aforementioned interview, it was Geary who gifted him the Adidas pair when he was a 17-year-old progressing through the Sheffield United ranks.
“I was looking to help him in any way possible and I just gave him some shinpads one day,” Geary recalls. “He was that young, he may not even have had a pair of his own at the time.
“I didn’t even realise he had kept them all this time until I met him out in Sheffield a few years ago and he was sort of laughing, saying ‘I’ve still got those shin pads’. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but it must have meant a lot to him because he said they were a bit of a lucky charm for him, a superstition, and he couldn’t play without them.”
Due to persistent knee problems, Geary wound his career up just before his 30th birthday. While the pain was already having a detrimental impact on his level of performance, Walker’s displays also convinced him that defiantly soldiering on would have been a futile endeavour.
“The game was changing,” Geary says. “As well as being really good technically, players were becoming more athletic, quicker and stronger. Kyle was in that category and he was coming up behind me like a train. Even a fully fit me didn’t stand a chance.
“When he was playing and I was on the bench, there was never any resentment. I knew that he was a lad who was was going to go far. Physically he was unbelievable, his attitude was spot-on and he’s gotten better and better technically over the years.
“He was like a sponge in terms of soaking things up. He’d always ask for advice and he was always very respectful in the way he went about it. Sheffield is a working-class city and that’s the background Kyle has come from. He was a humble and hard-working kid.
“He has obviously gone on to have a far better career than I had, but back then he was just a kid making his way so it was important to help him along by sharing what I had learned from the game.
“It’s funny how these things go around, because the next time I see him I’ll be the one asking for the advice instead of giving it.”
Currently in preparations for his fifth season as head coach of Sheffield United’s U18 team, Geary is now aiding the development of young players who are incentivised by the achievements of predecessors such as Walker.
“The training ground at Sheffield United is nice, but it’s not like one of the state-of-the-art ones you get at places like Brighton and Leicester where they’ve spent millions on them,” he says.
“Instead, what we can use as a good selling point for the young players is that guys like Kyle Walker, Harry Maguire and Aaron Ramsdale – who are all part of the England squad – have been here early in their careers. That’s what we try and reference for the young lads and that’s what we have to aim to continue doing going forward.”
Although his defensive dependability has been questioned in the past, Walker has regularly demonstrated his value to this England team since their Euro 2020 campaign began with a win against Croatia four weeks ago.
Operating in a couple of different roles – as a conventional right-back and in a central three – the 31-year-old has been a vital cog in a defensive unit that has yet to concede a goal from open play.
However, with the policing of the diminutive Lorenzo Insigne expected to dominate his remit tomorrow night, the biggest test of the man with the 14-year-old shin pads may still be ahead.
“Kyle is a world-class player now so the fact that he’s still wearing the shin pads and still talking about it is something I suppose I should take as a bit of a compliment,” Geary adds.
“At least we can claim that there’s a bit of Irish involvement in the final of the Euros!”