The Scotland Under-19 player Dominic Hyam has assured Ricky Sbragia he has no intention of turning his back on Scotland.
Southampton duo Sam Gallagher and Matt Targett both chose England after initially playing for the Scots.
However, England youth coach Noel Blake pointed out that Ricky Sbragia's team have plenty of players in their squad that could have made the same choice, including Hyam, the Reading central defender.
Hyam has been impressive at the centre of defence beside Dundee United's John Souttar as the Scots narrowly lost out to England and were held by Ukraine. Ahead of tomorrow's final game in the Euro Elite Group in Walsall against Montenegro, Hyam has pledged his future to Scotland.
He explained: "My dad was in the RAF from the age of 16 and used to be based at Leuchars in Fife. My mum was pregnant with me at the time and that's where I was born. He was only there for between six months and a year before we moved back down south.
"I've been there ever since, but I feel Scottish. I've got more Scottish than English in me because my dad's mum is from Dundee originally and mum's dad is from Glasgow. I was never called up by England at any age group. I've just focused on playing for Scotland and that's still the case now."
Hyam is part of a Caledonian colony at Reading with George McLennan and Harry Cardwell now in the Under-19s squad and Zak Jules and Jake Shepperd part of the Under 17 squad which reached the semi-finals of the European finals.
The goalkeeper Jonathan Henly is with the Under-21s and Tom McIntyre has also been part of the Under-19 squad too. Hyam said: "We all stick together at Reading and get a bit of stick from the English lads. They call us 'sweaty socks'. Reading are a good club for these young Scots to be nurtured."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article