Real gone kid hopes Scots are watching his bid to make big Liga
BRITS on the beach in Malaga in the middle of winter is not an uncommon sight, but it doesn’t take long for locals to realise there is something different about this one.
A fan shouts out: ‘To the first division!’ and is delighted when Jack Harper, the young Scottish centre-forward currently leading Malaga’s promotion charge back to La Liga, gives him a thumbs-up.
They know who he is in these parts. In the team’s last home win, he scored the winner to put them top. Are they following him as closely at SFA headquarters?
‘I’d like to think so,’ says the 22-year-old. ‘I think they have to be because of the club I’m playing for and the way we’re playing. They should know what I’m doing.’
Alex McLeish could have a striker playing in the top flight in Spain next season and one who unreservedly wants to play for Scotland.
‘He’d be put up for adoption (if he chose Spain),’ shouts brother Ryan when the player is asked if there might be a choice to be made between the two nations.
‘I’ve always known that my dad’s dream is for one of his kids to play for Scotland,’ adds Harper.
His Barrhead parents, a fireman and nurse, moved to Spain before Harper was born. It involved a 22-day road trip in a beaten-up old camper van that included one stop-off at Disneyland Paris and another unscheduled one in Fuengirola when the vehicle broke down. They set up home there.
Harper was born six months later. They lived on ‘Malaga Street’ and, when he was old enough, his dad took him to watch Malaga alongside the club’s army of British expat supporters.
‘I don’t ever remember learning Spanish or English, I just began speaking Spanish at school and English at home,’ recalls Harper.
‘I was Spanish through the day, and then I would go home and be Scottish. That’s how I would describe it.’
He joined Fuengirola’s underfives playing seven-a-side football on gravel pitches. When he was 12, he was spotted by Real Madrid.
Initially, his parents didn’t tell him about the club’s interest in case it distracted him from an important upcoming tournament.
‘My mum told me in the end,’ he says. ‘But she didn’t want my dad to know that I knew. She was so excited, she had to tell me. My mum thought I could handle it but my dad thought it was too much pressure.’
He was invited for a trial and was offered the chance to join the club.
‘You tell your friends and they don’t believe it, they think Madrid is something out of this world,’ says Harper.
He was 13 when he moved into Madrid’s young players’ digs at Majadahonda on the city’s outskirts. His favourite player in Spain had always been Cristiano Ronaldo. Meeting his hero never took the shine off his admiration.
‘He’s the hardest working player out there and I know because I’ve seen it first-hand,’ recalls Harper. ‘He was always the first to come in and the last to leave. I don’t think I ever saw his car move. Just seeing how hard he is to defend against and how he moves in the box is an amazing education.
‘I think he feels guilty about doing anything that’s not 100-per-cent professional and that’s probably the right thing. If you only play for ten, 12 years, you should give it your all and he takes that to the next level.’
Their paths would cross in the gym or in the pool at Real Madrid’s Valdebebas training complex but sometimes they would be on opposite sides in training.
When then Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti wanted a couple of extra players for practice games, Harper would often get the call to simulate the striker the team would be up against in the next match.
How did that feel? ‘Well, it’s your moment,’ he says. ‘But you’re only 18, it’s only the start. A little bit of tension is good for a footballer. Too much, probably not, but some tension builds character. If you can handle it, then that’s good.’
The increased attention was also character-building.
‘Playing at Madrid, I had people messaging me on social media every now and then asking: “Are you actually Scottish?”’
He was proud to get his first call-up to play with the Scotland Under-16s, although he admits the next obstacle was other players’ preconceptions that he might be coming in as the big ‘I am’ because he was at Real Madrid.
‘I felt like they would observe me a little bit more and keep their distance,’ he says. ‘Maybe they were thinking: “His attitude won’t be good because he’s come from a big club”. That wasn’t the case but maybe that’s what I would have thought in their position. I just wanted to blend in and play football for my country.’
He didn’t always blend in — most dramatically with Under-19s coach Ricky Sbragia who labelled him a ‘luxury’ player and dropped him. It was a comment that Sbragia later admitted regretting.
For Harper, it was the indirect nature of the criticism that hurt. ‘I think he should have talked to me before or after. He was a bit unlucky with his choice of wording. Of course he’s completely within his rights to not take a player if he doesn’t want to.
‘I was just a bit upset because I was reading these things and not being confronted by anyone.
‘I was hurt to start with that I wasn’t in the squad. I wouldn’t class myself as a luxury player. If you ask anyone, the first thing they’d say is I am a hard worker.’
There would be a knockback from his employers, too. Real Madrid disbanded their C-team in 2015 just as Harper was due to make the step up to play for them.
They wanted to keep him and send him out on loan but he chose a different path. ‘I was going to Stoke City,’ he says. ‘Mark Hughes was manager and they had been watching me the whole year. I was all ready to sign but the doctor blocked it. ‘I had internal bleeding in my knee from my last game for Madrid. I didn’t think it was that bad but, when they did more tests, it was a six-month lay-off. ‘It was heartbreaking. I’ve not cried much in my life. I came home and did a month’s recovery by myself and Brighton were still keen on signing me. I still appreciate that.’
Although the move to Brighton was not a success — blighted by those first months spent alone in physio instead of getting to know new team-mates on the pitch — he feels the experience helped.
‘Growing up in Madrid, I would say I have the tiki-taka side of football,’ he says. ‘I still had to man up and that’s what English football gave me.’
Now back in Spain as an integral part of Malaga’s promotion drive, his unorthodox career path seems to have matured him beyond his years.
He talks about the dangers of what he calls ‘trying to be a footballer too early’ and stresses the importance of appreciating the learning journey: ‘As a kid, you’re not a player yet,’ he says. ‘You’re a student of the game.’
He remains an unashamed mix of Scottish and Spanish, shouting
Gol when he scores because ‘that’s what the fans shout’ but preferring Irn-Bru over sangria. ‘I’ll have one now and then, when I deserve one’, he admits.
As for his football allegiances, they lie with Malaga — and Scotland: ‘Malaga’s objectives are the same as mine. Hopefully both me and the club will be playing in the top division next year.’
If that happens, he’ll be hard to ignore for his national team. ‘I’ve not received a call, no one has asked me for tickets to come and watch me, but I’d like to think they know what I’m doing,’ he says of his chances of a call-up.
The prospect of playing next term against the Real side he walked away from will remind everyone who he is. And, if the call comes before then, it will only boost his confidence as he tries to shoot Malaga back into the big time.