Northern Ireland v Hungary (29/03/2022)

KEEN TO KICK ON

who was eager to swap shirts with the defender following their ding-dong tussle during the friendly in Dnipro last June. “I’ve always prided myself on trying to rise to the level I’m playing against and the likes of Shaqiri, Pulisic and Yarmolenko are the types of player I want to test myself against ,” he said. “I always feel it gets the best out of me.” Following November’s home win over Lithuania and scoreless draw with Italy in Belfast , Brown is keen to secure another positive result on home soil ahead of the UEFA Nations League kicking off in a few months’ time. Ian Baraclough’s team, who are the top seeds in Group 2 in League C of the 2022-23 competition, are set to play Greece at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park on Thursday 2 June. Northern Ireland’s second game in the group stage of the third edition of UEFA’s Nations League will see them take on Cyprus or Estonia away on Sunday 5 June. Matchday three for Northern Ireland sees them on the road again – away to Kosovo on Thursday 9 June. And a busy schedule that month will draw to a close with a home match against Cyprus or Estonia on Sunday the 12th. “We have a close-knit group and we all feel we are heading in the right direction and we all have that drive and desire to improve,” said Brown. “This is an important camp because it’s the last one we’ ll have before the Nations League and we want to keep moving forward as a team.”

Originally called up for the U21s, who were managed by Ian Baraclough at the time, the London-born defender mouthed a ‘wow’ when named in Michael O’Neill’s starting line-up. “It’s a special memory,” said Brown, who falls into a rare football demographic of footballers who made their senior international debut ahead of playing for the U21s. The centre back, who is currently on loan at Oxford United from Cardiff City, would go on to make his Northern Ireland U21s bow in a Euro qualifying defeat to Romania the following month. “I had actually just received my first call-up for the U21s so a senior debut wasn’t even in my thoughts,” he said. “I’d played in a training game against the senior lads earlier in the week and when I went back to the U21s’ hotel Ian said ‘pack your stuff, you’re going up to the seniors’. “I trained for a few days with the seniors and thought that was that , but then in the meeting room Michael named the team and he called out my name. I was like ‘wow’. “I was shocked, but as soon as I started playing all the nerves went . It was only really after the game that it really sank in that I’d made my debut . It was a real confidence boost .” Fast forward to the first international window of 2022 and Brown has seven caps to his name, including recent appearances in home and away World Cup qualifiers against Switzerland. “I think I’ve done well when I look at where I’ve come from to where I am now,” he said. “Playing against Switzerland was a great experience and it made me want to really kick on and cement my place in the squad and maybe secure a bigger role in it .” A quick check of his CV shows that Brown, who recently turned 24, has already come up against the likes of Swiss star Xherdan Shaqiri, Chelsea and USA forward Christian Pulisic and West Ham United and Ukraine striker Andriy Yarmolenko,

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