FA Cup: Why all roads lead back to Port Vale for Chris Birchall
By Jamie Jackson (theguardian.com)Chris Birchall may have played alongside David Beckham in Los Angeles and against England in a World Cup finals, but that does not mean the Port Vale midfielder will be treating Saturday's FA Cup tie against Brighton & Hove Albion lightly.
Birchall's intriguing career captured the limelight when the Stafford-born Englishman received an unlikely call-up for Trinidad & Tobago, and he then faced Sven-Goran Eriksson's England side at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
On Saturday at Vale Park Birchall will don the colours of his boyhood team in the fourth-round tie against Brighton, one of his six former clubs in a footballing odyssey that has also taken in Coventry City, St Mirren, Carlisle United, Beckham's LA Galaxy and Columbus Crew, before coming full circle with a return to Vale this time last year.
"I'd definitely say I was an old 29-year-old because of the places that I've been and the managers I've played under, the different opportunities I've had of playing in different countries. I feel like I have been around really," says Birchall, who is relishing facing Brighton, seventh in the Championship, with Vale's eighth position in League One an indication of how well they are performing this season.
Birchall's globe-trotting days began during his first spell with Port Vale, for whom he had made his debut aged 16 in a 2-0 League Cup defeat away at Charlton in September 2001. He had only just established a first-team place when, four years later in 2005, the surprise international call came from Trinidad & Tobago, for whom Birchall qualifies due to the fact his mother was born in the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain.
"It was a long time ago. They called me up and the next week I was on a plane [to Trinidad], I'd never been there before and it was a bit of a culture shock, I didn't know how people were going to take me, accept me," says Birchall, although he was was welcomed warmly. "There's a lot of different cultures over there, so I didn't expect to be accepted as much as I was," says Birchall. "But on the pitch [how I] try to battle, they took to that and I was lucky, really."
He played an integral role in the Soca Warriors securing a berth at the World Cup for the first time, scoring a late equaliser in the home leg of the play-off against Bahrain. T&T won the away match, 1-0, to become the smallest nation ever, in terms of both population and geography, to compete in the finals.
"It was great. I was very young, and it was a whirlwind," says Birchall, who featured in all three group games in Germany in a squad that included Dwight Yorke, Shaka Hislop and Kenwyne Jones. "Once we [made it] I couldn't wait, it seemed to take ages," Birchall says. "But once there it was something I didn't really appreciate until I looked back and watched the DVDs. But it was a great experience."
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