Tierney's tale: Loving and learning from the game
OUR LEFT-BACK ON HOW HIS ATTITUDE TO LEARNING AND HARD WORK HAS REMAINED A CONSTANT DURING THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF HIS CAREER TO DATE
Kieran Tierney’s incredible work ethic has always been the bedrock from which his career has been built. Through the good times and bad, adversity and success – everything comes back to his industriousness that was instilled in him from a very young age.
He joined his boyhood club Celtic as an eight-year-old and believes it was his attitude and commitment above all else that led to him making his first-team debut aged 17. He went on to win four league titles with the Bhoys before joining Arsenal, lifting the FA Cup at the end of his first season with us.
He’s now closing in on 100 Premier League appearances for us (he played 102 times in the Scottish Premiership) but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. After featuring 27 times in the 2022/23 season, he was loaned to Real Sociedad in La Liga the following year, and has had a battle on his hands to win his place back ever since.
But KT, as he’s known around the Sobha Realty Training Centre, has approached that challenge like he has any other – by rolling his sleeves up and getting to work. That dedication, he says, is rooted in his love for football, and what continues to fuel his appetite for the game today.
“You get into the game because it’s your passion and your hobby,” the left-back begins. “You play because you love it, growing up watching your idols and your club, and for me that was Celtic. I’ve played the game for as long as I can remember, and people always say it, but it’s true – you’ve got to enjoy it.
“You have to play with a smile on your face. You are always told that by your parents and your coaches growing up, and that’s really important to keep with you throughout your career.
“When you become a pro, there’s a lot of pressure so you need to remember why you started.”
So where did that love of the game come from for the young Kieran?
“Obviously your parents first of all, they are the ones who love, support and guide you in those early days and bring you up in that life. But also growing up where I did, football is the main sport in Scotland anyway, but the environment I was in gave me a real love for the game.
“Going on the supporter buses every week to watch the games, going to a massive stadium to watch Celtic, going to the away grounds – it just brings that love for the game and I had that from a young age. My parents were a huge part of that, and I looked up to the players as well – Henrik Larsson was a hero for me.”
It wasn’t long before KT went from watching his Celtic heroes from the stands to training with them every day.
Scott Brown was already a club legend by the time Kieran was working his way through the youth ranks, and the midfielder would go on to win 10 league titles in his Celtic career, as well as 12 domestic cups.
Many of those were won alongside KT, and the no-nonsense skipper acted as something of a mentor to him from day one.
“He was the captain at the time, and from the outside he can be an intimidating player, but as soon I was in the squad he looked after me,” Kieran reflects. “He coached me a bit for the under-20s because he was doing his coaching badges at the time, then when I came into the first-team he really looked after me.
“Still I speak to him most days, he’s probably my best friend in football. He was amazing for me when I started – the definition of a captain. If you could describe what a captain should be, it would be Scott Brown.
"You have to play with a smile on your face. that’s really important to keep with you throughout your career"
"You had other players like Charlie Mulgrew and Mikael Lustig who had so much experience and so many international caps, so going into a changing room and learning from guys like that was great. I think people like that are rare to come across now. I think generations have changed a bit so they were the last of the old school.
“The first time I met Scott would have been when I was a ballboy,” he adds, “but the first time properly would have been in training. He seemed to take a liking to me, he liked my attitude and my work ethic I think. He was definitely intimidating though – he still is now! I wouldn’t say anything to him!
“But I think you need that fear factor as a young player. You don’t want to be able to walk into a changing room at that age and think it’s all easy. I think that’s changed with this generation but then there was always a fear factor.”
KT is still only 27, but he believes the way young players come into the game has changed just during the course of his own career: “I made my debut at 17, so it’s 10 years ago, but even then, I had jobs to do around the team. I would clean the boots, help get the balls and cones ready for training for the first-team. You had to earn the respect of the first-team, and it takes time. It can take a lot of games, not after a single training session. It takes time to earn respect and I think that’s how it should be. It’s a tough trade to be in, so it’s not meant to be easy.”
It’s clear that he had the right attitude to succeed in football from very early on, but does he look back now and identify a particular moment or year when things clicked, and he made a big stride forward in his development?
“I always, always tried to work my hardest,” he explains, “but when we went full-time and got contracts at 16, I got just a one-year deal, and it was on lower money than everyone else.
“Basically it was the club saying: ‘Let’s see how he is for a year.’ Some of the others got two or three-year deals, but I got one year. So it was that year, I said to myself: ‘I’ve got nothing to lose now, let’s just work harder than everyone, enjoy it, and see where it takes me.’
“I knew that if Celtic didn’t want me, that’s down to them, but it was down to me to give absolutely everything. And that year, I didn’t achieve anything great, but I was consistent.
“Our left-back for that age group moved up a year, so the spot came free and I played a lot of games. At the end of the year I got another deal, and that was the year that I made my debut at 17. So I think the year before that was massive, because it could have gone the other way for me. Getting a semi-rejection at that age with just a one-year deal could have set me back, but that really helped inspire me.”
"It takes time to earn respect and I think that’s how it should be. It’s a tough trade to be in, so it’s not meant to be easy"
Getting his first big chance, he says, was not necessarily down to his performances, but how he behaved off the pitch and in training.
“When we moved up to the under-20s,” he continues, “I was 17, the first-team manager at the time was Ronny Deila, with his assistants John Collins and John Kennedy, and those three seemed to love me from the start.
“They saw my work ethic. I was a young boy, very raw, technique all over the place, not the finished article by any means, but they saw something they could work with.
“Work ethic is my main thing, and I knew if I could give everything I had, I wouldn’t have any regrets. They saw that, and when I trained with them, they took me under their wing, looked after me, improved me. They did extra work with me after training on certain things, and that’s the season I broke through and made my debut. That was an important year, and it was down to Ronny Deila.”
Kieran made his Celtic debut at the end of the 2014/15 season, then was virtually ever-present from then on, rounding off his breakthrough season with a goal in the final day 7-0 win over Motherwell, and winning the PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year award.
It was the culmination of the ambition he’d held since his schooldays. “School was tough, really tough” he reveals. “I did two years at my own high school in Motherwell, Our Lady’s, but in the third year Celtic moved us to a different school so you were with your teammates. That was hard work, you would have to get up at 5.30 every morning, train before school, have the day at school then train again at night. I wouldn’t say it was enjoyable, but it worked for me.
“Going to a new school at that age can be daunting, away from your friends, but I wanted to play for Celtic so I knew I had to do it. I gave everything, I wasn’t the smartest in school, but like always, I tried hard.
“I always had a feeling that I would be a footballer. There was nothing to base that on really, I wasn’t in the first-team at that age, I wasn’t the main player in my age group, but I focused everything on becoming a footballer and gave everything towards that. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t made it.”
Since making his debut, Kieran has made more than 300 club appearances – including a loan spell in La Liga – and has played 47 times for the national team. So how different a player does he think he is to the one that made his debut aged 17?
“I’ve been a first-team player for 10 years, which is a long time, so I feel experienced. A lot has changed in my life as well. I moved away from home for the first time when I came here, I’ve played abroad for a year, so I enjoy learning different things and putting myself out of my comfort zone. Last year for example at Real Sociedad, where the manager doesn’t speak English, it’s a new league, a new culture. But to be honest the hardest jump was moving away from home for the first time and coming to London in 2019. I was a lot more mature by the time I went to Spain, and I’ve grown up a lot in the last few years.”
He’s also played under six different managers at club level, and three for the national team, and he says each of them has shaped the player he is now. However he believes that’s more down to the changing demands of the sport: “The game has changed, it’s getting more tactical and you need to be switched on. When you are a young player you do a lot more about what feels right at the time, but the game has definitely evolved. The first time I saw that was going into the changing room with Ronny Deila, but then the season after that, when Brendan Rodgers came in having been at Liverpool, he showed me a new version of football. That progressed every year, and the way I watched games changed too.
“I began looking more at formations, tactics and style of play. I would watch different left-backs and analyse them more myself. That’s such a big part of the game now, you need to be switched on to every scenario. The manager here is unbelievable tactically, so I want to take as much as I can, learn as much as I can because it will improve you. You learn every day.
“I was a bit more off the cuff when I started, I was up and down all the time but now I need to be more positionally aware tactically. Different teams want different styles now, and there is more emphasis on wingers to get forward and beat their man than the full-back now. So the game has changed since I made my debut.”
KT’s career has taken him in unexpected directions at times over the past decade, but does he have any plans for what might come after his playing days?
“No, nothing in particular yet”, he admits, “but I have an aspiration to open a dog shelter one day. I’m an ambassador for the SSPCA (Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) so that’s the only thing that’s a goal of mine.
“But in terms of coaching, I haven’t done any badges yet, so it’s hard to say what I will do. I think I would have an interest in it though, and maybe in future when I’m not so focused on playing, I will have more of a plan for that.”
And finally, if he could go back to the beginning of his football journey, armed with something he’d learned later in life, what would that be?
“I wouldn’t have changed anything,” he smiles. “I was young and naive when I started, but I enjoyed every single minute. That naivety can help you at that age anyway. You have no fear at 16 or 17. There is stuff I might change, like the injuries and things like that, but you can’t control that anyway, so no, I have no regrets at all.”
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