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Carter-Vickers ready to fight for more time after ‘dream’ debut with Tottenham

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Cameron Carter-Vickers’ Tottenham debut was a long time coming. For the past several weeks, the 18-year-old defender has sat patiently on the Spurs bench, waiting for his chance. It finally came on Wednesday, and it went better than most could have imagined.

The U.S. Under-23 Men’s National Team centerback made his competitive debut on Wednesday afternoon, starting in central defense in Tottenham’s 5-0 League Cup win over Gillingham. Partnered with Kevin Wimmer at centerback, Carter-Vickers was steady throughout the match, marking his debut as a positive one after seven years in the Tottenham system.

“It’s a dream come true. I’ve been working all these years to get to this stage,” Carter-Vickers told Spurs TV, “so to play and win 5-0, it’s a dream… I got a little bit nervous, but I think that helped me. It keeps me on my toes. It was good for me.

“Hopefully (it’s the first of many),” he added. “I just have to keep my head down, keep working on the training ground and push on.”

It was Carter-Vickers’ work on the training ground that nearly got him a goal in his first competitive match. The young defender got a head to an early corner, only to see it roll just wide. The 18-year-old stressed that he has been working on set pieces in recent weeks, and that it was nice to see it nearly pay off with what would have been a memorable goal.

Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has seen those improvements first hand. After starting the defender against the likes of Atletico Madrid and Juventus in preseason, Pochetttino knew that the 18-year-old was ready to take the next step

“We spent a lot of time working with him. We know very well that quality Cameron shows, or Marcus (Edwards) or Harry Winks, all of the players that were involved in the preseason in Australia,” Pochettino said. “The only thing is to wait, be patient, and when they have the opportunity, show their quality, because in the future, they will be big players for us.”

“Cameron played very well, but the whole team played very well,” he added. “It was fantastic to play with confidence to see him play the way that we play.”

As the manager alluded to, Carter-Vickers is just one of several talented youngsters coming up through the Tottenham system. 19-year-old Josh Onomah scored a goal on Wednesday afternoon. Winks earned his first ever start after previously joining the team off the bench, while Edwards made his competitive debut as well with a substitute appearance.

Carter-Vickers feels privileged to be a part of that group, one that appears set to push towards the first team. Wednesday, in theory, should be the first of many for a player that now seems firmly entrenched in Tottenham’s first team.

 

 

“It’s fantastic. You can see when Josh scored, me and Harry Winks were the first to run over and congratulate him,” Carter-Vickers said. “It was good for him, and for us, to see someone you’ve grown up with for all these years score at White Hart Lane. I’ve been with them for awhile now, since I was like 10 or 11. Everyone gets on. We know each other really well. We all want each other to do well.

“You can look all through the academy, right through the younger ages. There’s a lot of talent there,” he added. “What’s special about this manager is, if you train well, train hard, you’ll get your opportunity.”

Comments

  1. The US could have an one of the best Center Back tandems in Brooks & CCV. If these two continue to develop to their full potential these 2 could be a dominant force for a long, long time. They are both young, technical & tactically skilled, good at distributing out of the back while being aerial threats both offensively & defensively. With a little more time to mature and build chemistry they could be the base upon which the USMNT builds it’s team for the next 2+ cycles.

    Looking forward to seeing how a team comprised of Brooks, CCV, Zelalem, Hyndman, Pulisic, Akale, Wright, Rubin & Perez develop over the next 4-8 years. Should be fun to watch.

    Reply
    • A couple of years ago I and others were making the point that the US national team pool was considerably deeper, but the talent level was about the same. Now I think we can see that we are not only getting deeper, our quality is also improving. Guys like CCV, Brooks, and Pulisic all seem to have the potential to become of international quality; players who could end up with transfer values like $30 or $40 million.

      Reply
      • I’ve been of the same/similar opinion. Over the last 10 yrs we’ve made minor improvements in quality of the players in the player pool, but increased the size of the pool by a considerable amount. Now we’re entering the next stage of our evolution in the sport, where we begin to make significant strides in regards to increasing the Quality of the players. Pulisic, Brooks, & CCV maybe the first of the new breed….but they are the just the tip of the iceberg.

        Only time will tell how our young players ultimately end up. But at the moment things are looking very promising for the future of the USMNT.

      • There has been a lot of articles in the English Press today about an apparent push by the English FA targeting CCV to make a switch to England. Some press has called the US, “poachers” and apparently did not know that, although born in England, his father, Howard Carter, was a standout in college BB at SMU and was drafted and played for the Denver Nuggets, spent much time in the US with his father and relatives and was part of the U17,U20 and U23 US teams.

        England has a large player pool of young and technically gifted players, but many of them have been locked out of the EPL and big teams because of the preference of many managers to buy more experienced foreign players on the world market as the EPL and FA has been infused with so much money in the last few years. Players like Jack Harrison have found a way to circumvent this by playing abroad, but CCV came up through the youth system on a team committed to young players. England could rectify this by just calling up and playing CCV in upcoming WCQ, but Big Sam is not the coach to do that. Jurgen Klinsamnn is though, so expect CCV to be called into a WCQ against T&T or Panama for a few minutes and cap tie him to the US before he is 20 yo

        By the way,Howar Carter received French citizenship when he played for the French National BB team and his mother is Irish. So while he has a US passport and a UK passport, he is also eligible to get a passport from France or Ireland and would be eligible to represent those nations also.

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