When Norwich midfielder McLean scored that goal against Denmark in November, Kelly was one of the first to empty the Scotland bench and lead the chasing pack.<\/p>\n
He shares a strong bond with the 34-year-old and other senior figures within the group, such as Andy Robertson. He sits beside the captain on international commutes.<\/p>\n
Nobody has a bad word to say about the former Motherwell player and optimism just always seems to be oozing out of him despite two seasons of limited minutes.<\/p>\n
Game time was not a problem at Fir Park, where Kelly was first choice for four years before moving back to Rangers, where he started his career as a young prospect.<\/p>\n
Long-time pal and former team-mate Andy Halliday played with him at both clubs.<\/p>\n
He remembers Kelly’s impact in the Motherwell dressing room, controlling fines, organising days out and running a Traitors-like card game, which some of the Scotland squad got involved in during Sunday’s long-haul flight to the US.<\/p>\n
“That’s just his way of making sure everyone bonds together,” Halliday tells BBC Scotland.<\/p>\n
At Rangers, his first impressions of the then teenage Kelly were his character standing out despite his age. “Typical Glasgow boy, gallus,” he adds.<\/p>\n
The fact Kelly’s three closest mates at Ibrox at that time – Halliday, Lee Wallace and Kenny Miller – were all of an older age told the former midfielder a lot about his personality.<\/p>\n
And Halliday is in no doubt that the goalkeeper’s nature will be having a positive impact among the Scotland squad, even if time on the park will inevitably be restricted.<\/p>\n
“He’s opinionated in a good way, whether he’s playing or not,” Halliday tells BBC Scotland. “Experienced players will go to Liam and have chats around the game.<\/p>\n
“Liam will accept himself his role won’t involve many minutes on the pitch. A lot of it will involve what he can bring off the pitch.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Norwich midfielder McLean scored that goal against Denmark in November, Kelly was one of the first to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-718962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}