England vs United States: From the Blue Square Premier to the big time, the rise and rise of Callum Wilson

Wilson has been rewarded for his fine form with a call-up to the national team - but it's been a long time coming

At first glance, Callum Wilson’s rise from relatively obscurity to the cusp of an England debut looks a rapid one. The reality, though, is somewhat different.

Wilson has earned his call-up after a stunning start to the season with Bournemouth, with the 26-year-old scoring six Premier League goals for Eddie Howe’s side so far this season.

Scratch beneath the surface of his slick finishing on the South Coast, however, and Wilson’s climb from the Midlands to the summit of English football is one that many would have found too difficult to even contemplate.

And although Wilson can now enjoy all the trappings of the Premier League, it wasn’t too long ago that he was roughing it on loan at Kettering – at the time, a club more concerned with the imminent threat of administration as creditors, rather than fans, formed a queue around their soon-to-be vacated Rockingham Road ground.

If Wilson was in search of football glamour in January 2011, then he had clearly taken a wrong turn.

But it soon becomes clear from speaking to those who coached and played with him during his formative years that the England new boy’s attitude never wavered. A big time Charlie? Not on your Nelly.

“It wasn’t the easy environment to come into,” says Kettering boss, Marcus Law, who is now in his second spell at the Southern League Central table-toppers.

“We were in the Blue Square Premier at the time and the chairman had disappeared. All of sudden our budget had gone from 64k to 15 grand. We couldn’t bring in players who cost any money basically. I managed to do a deal with Aidy Boothroyd at Coventry for Callum and also Luke O’Neill from Leicester City.

“Both of them were worth about £3m a few years later and I had them playing for me for free.”

Playing right wing, Wilson hardly set the world on fire but, ultimately, that loan move, coupled with another to Tamworth, following Law’s move there from Kettering in June 2011, proved priceless.

“It’s a massive education for these players – they have to change their mentality to go out and perform,” says Law.

Wilson left Coventry for a spell with Kettering (Getty Images)

“I used to tell them that our goalkeeper’s win bonus would pay his mortgage – and that if a young academy tried to pop in a nice development style ball in front of the centre-half with two minutes to go then he’s not going to be too happy if we lose possession, the opposition score and we draw or lose the game.

“It’s understanding the elements that go into competitive football. In development football, yes you’re upset when you lose but the mindset of the club is how the first team have got on.

“These boys who come in and play in the Conference get a firm understanding of how the mood can change with a win or a draw, certainly on the money these guys are on.

“Callum picked up on that immediately. He came into Kettering, where we had players not being paid or players restricted from playing because of contractual obligations and at the same time he had to focus on himself and performing.

“It’s a credit to him despite everything that was going on, that he was always a threat, always a talent.”

Back at Coventry, a series of niggling injuries continued to hamper Wilson’s route to the first team and until the arrival of Steven Pressley as the club’s manager in March 2013, it looked as though the striker might have had to head elsewhere permanently to prove his worth.

Pressley's arrival as boss sparked Wilson into form (Getty Images)

Not that his lack of opportunities hampered his self-belief.

“We came through the academy together and a lot of the boys came through to the Coventry first team at roughly the same time,” says Conor Thomas, one of a crop of players once dubbed the best thing to come out of Coventry since the Specials by FourFourTwo magazine back in 2014.

“At Cov, even in the youth team, he wasn’t really the main prospect, even when it came to our strikers, there were others ahead of him.

“But he has always been so confident – his self-belief is through the roof. But in a good way. His mindset has always been that he’s the best at what he does and he’ll always score goals.

“There were times when we were a bit younger when we would train with the first team. He always likes to back himself and he does it out loud and in a funny way.

“You could tell there were people in the dressing room thinking ‘hang on a minute, who’s he?”

If they didn’t know who he was then, they certainly do now, with Wilson having left Coventry to join Bournemouth in the summer of 2014 after a season that saw him score 22 goals despite missing two months of the campaign with a dislocated shoulder.

Wilson has seen his fine form rewarded (Getty Images)

A series of injuries continued to stall his progress at the Cherries but now, fit and firing, Wilson is ready to put all the experiences he gathered away from the bright lights of the Premier League to good use.

“He has had some bad injuries but his mindset has always been top class – I’ve never met someone who has a mindset like it,” says Thomas, now at Cheltenham in League Two. “He hasn’t had it easy. There were times when his future at Coventry looked in doubt and he was only getting a deal for one more season because of his injuries. It wasn’t until Steven Pressley came in and gave him a run in the team that he was able to get on a roll.

“Once that happened he was unstoppable.”

Both club and country will hope that continues for some time yet.