Throughout his young career to date, Kieran Morrison takes a phone call from his dad after every game.<\/p>\n
It was no different as he made his senior Northern Ireland debut against Guinea on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Standing on the pitch in the sweltering La Linea sun, under the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar, he spoke to his dad about his first 45 minutes in a green shirt.<\/p>\n
“He was telling me what I could have done better and what I done well,” a proud Morrison said.<\/p>\n
“He does that every game. He’s my coach and he has been since I was four years old.<\/p>\n
“After every game he calls me until I answer. I’m glad I have that type of person in my corner, sometimes it’s to give me criticism and other times it’s to offer praise.”<\/p>\n
Despite only making two senior Liverpool appearances under the now-departed Arne Slot, in the EFL Cup and FA Cup, Morrison was called into Michael O’Neill’s senior squad for the World Cup play-off with Italy in March.<\/p>\n
He did not feature in Bergamo, or in the friendly with Wales that followed, but he got his chance in the 1-0 win over Guinea in Spain. <\/p>\n
“At the start of the season I wouldn’t have expected to hear that,” he said on what it felt like to be called a Northern Ireland international. <\/p>\n
“I’m very proud and my family is very proud too. I’m buzzing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout his young career to date, Kieran Morrison takes a phone call from his dad after every game.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-484263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}