The most recent edition of The Next Big Thing podcast from The Athletic, which takes a look at the most exciting young talents in the Premier League, mainly focused on 18-year-old Leeds United winger Stuart McKinstry.
After finalising his move to Leeds United from Scottish Premiership side Motherwell in the summer of 2019, McKinstry went on to sign his first professional contract with the club later that year, with the young attacker initially committing his future to the Whites until 2022.
He then went on to add another year onto his Whites contract back in August, which may indicate that he has settled in well with the Yorkshire-based club, however, during this recent edition of The Next Big Thing podcast from The Athletic, writer Phil Hay explained that the teenager was quite reluctant to leave his native Scotland prior to joining the Whites in July last year.
He said: “He’s born and bred Motherwell, towards the west coast of Scotland, and when I say born and bred, I mean it – his family are season ticket holders, he went to his first game before he was two; his mum says, in essence, to stop him getting sucked in by either of the Old Firm clubs, as tends to happen in that part of the world.
“He was a mascot for the club and then he joined the club’s academy, he broke into the first-team squad and what I found most intriguing when I spoke to his mum about him, was his sort of reluctance to take what were very good offers down south.
“He had interest from Southampton, which he felt was too far south and too much of a leap, and even with Leeds – when Leeds bid for him and said, ‘look, we really, really want to sign you’ – he was in two minds and the family had to say to him – ‘why don’t you go and have a look?’
“The chief executive, Alan Burrows, at Motherwell said to him – ‘just go and have a look at the club, see what you think, get a feel for it and come back and tell us what’s what.’
“And McKinstry went and he enjoyed it down here, he watched the U18s play and he didn’t feel that he was out of his depth, he was given a shirt by Craig Dean, who’s the head of youth recruitment at Leeds, but even when he went back, he said to the family – ‘I’m not sure, I don’t know if this is for me, I’m going to be a long way from you all, it could be difficult.’
“So, in the end, the decision was made that his father, John, would move to Wetherby with him. The family, essentially, split in two to make sure that he would have a bit of support locally and would have somebody to lean on as he settled in at the academy.”
Do you think McKinstry made the right decision by joining Leeds?
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TIF Thoughts…
As can be seen in what Hay had to say, it seems as though McKinstry’s reluctance to leave Scotland and move to England was due to his desire to stay close to his family, which may be understandable, especially when you consider that he was only 16 years old at the time of making this move and may not have been ready to leave Scotland and his family behind in order to embark on this new adventure in England.
It is nice to see that McKinstry is seemingly so close with his family and it is nice to see that his father opted to move to Wetherby with him in order to help him settle in with his new club.
Considering that he has since earned a contract extension with the Whites and he has ‘been a regular for the academy sides at Thorp Arch since his arrival’ at the Yorkshire-based club, perhaps he can now look back on his choice to leave his boyhood team for Leeds in 2019 as being the right decision.