From Arsenal to Anderlecht and everything in between, Wales’ James Lawrence on his football journey
Exclusive interview: Ryan Giggs’ surprise call-up has one of the most interesting CVs in British football having played alongside Harry Kane, against Robin van Persie and under Dennis Bergkamp
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Your support makes all the difference.He boasts one of British football's most unusual CVs - and if James Lawrence runs out for Wales against Denmark on Friday night it will double up as one of world football’s most unlikely international graduation ceremonies.
Playing with Harry Kane (for Arsenal), walking into an Ajax dressing room and being greeted by Dennis Bergkamp, rubbing shoulders with Robin van Persie in the Europa League for little known Slovakian side Trencin and then earning a move to Anderlecht this summer almost a decade after being released by QPR.
He may only be 26 but Wales new boy James Lawrence has crammed a lot in.
Not that many Welsh fans had heard of him when he got the call from Welsh boss, Ryan Giggs, last week. He was such a novelty that #JamesLawrencefacts was trending within hours on Twitter.
“It has hilarious,” he says. “Some of them were brilliant. One said that planning permission had been granted for a statue of my nan in Haverfordwest Town centre.”
It’s through his grandparents that the Henley-on-Thames born defender is eligible to play for Giggs’ side. He could also have been called up by South Africa had the former Manchester United great not got in there first.
This, though, is a story that extends far beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom.
Involved with both Arsenal and QPR’s academies as a youngster, Lawrence was eventually handed a break with Harleem at the age of 16. Shortly after Ajax came calling, providing Lawrence with the chance of a lifetime.
“I think when I first moved away there were only probably three or four players with teams in Europe,” he says. “One of the others was Eric Dier at Sporting and look how things have paid off for him.
“Taking the chance at a young age, I’m not going to say it paid off immediately, because it has taken some time, it has been a long road. But I can’t imagine being in this position now if I had stayed in England.
“I’ve had a lot of great experiences. Some of it has been chance and some of it I’ve had to work hard for but that’s the reason I left, I wanted to find things that I wouldn’t have found back home.
“Being coached by Dennis Bergkamp and playing for an academy like Ajax. I don’t think any normal footballer in the UK would have dreamed of doing that. It has been a unique experience.
“I definitely fanboyed when Bergkamp walked in – but I managed to do it in my mind and keep my cool. A lot of things were going through my mind but at the end of the day I had to perform and I had to show him what I could do on the pitch.
“I did shake his hand and tell him he was a great player but that was about it.”
Lawrence had a similarly surreal experience in this year’s Europa League, shortly before leaving Trencin, the club he had called home since 2014.
“We were playing Feyenoord in the qualifiers and I was up against Robin van Persie, another one of my Arsenal heroes,” he says. “During the game I couldn’t say anything but after the game I definitely had a word with him, just to let him know that he was one of my idols growing up.
“At the end of the day that’s why you play football – you want to be at the same level as these players and competing with them.”
A generation of enlightened young British footballers are increasingly looking overseas in order to expand their experience and also take advantage of the greater first team opportunities that now exist away from the Premier League.
In Lawrence’s case, a string of excellent performances for Anderlecht in the Jupiler Pro League has been enough to earn him the opportunity to play alongside the likes of Gareth Bale - another footballer who has shone overseas.
“I think there’s more of an adventurous element creeping into the game back home,” says Lawrence. “I think there’s more openness to going abroad instead of doing the standard – getting loaned out to a team in League Two and then moving through the ranks that way.
“I think players are more open and more ambitious and thinking why would I go down that path when I can out and play for an attractive team in Europe. There’s more awareness of it being a possible route.
“It’s not just the football either. Going overseas at an early age, as a teenager, gives you a much wider perspective culturally. There are new languages to learn, new cities to explore. It made me feel very comfortable in my own skin and made me feel very comfortable in new places. I think that’s what coaches want too – they want players who are happy to be taken out of their comfort zone.
“If I had stayed in England, perhaps I would have been more narrow-minded and only had one way of thinking.”
A heart scare while at Ajax handed him the kind of experience that he could have done without. According to Lawrence his heart problem is relatively common but often goes undetected as a result of it only surfacing when training reaches a certain level of intensity.
In Lawrence’s case it made it impossible for him to meet the physical demands he was placing on his heart while he was with the Dutch giants.
“My heart would skip from 180 [beats per minute] to 230 or 240,” he says. “My heart would race, I would get dizzy and have to sit down to wait for my heart to slow down. I had to have an operation – it wasn’t open-heart surgery but it was still pretty scary. That was definitely a moment for me. I was 18-years-old and I was really wondering whether I would be able to carry on with my career.”
Just eight years on, he’s hoping his heart will flutter for all the right reasons should Giggs hand him the call against either Denmark or Albania.
The sculptors of Haverfordwest are on standby.
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