Fleck proud of Scotland campaign
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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John Fleck is aiming to emulate his uncle's feats at Rangers FC but first the playmaker hopes to captain Scotland against the odds into the semi-finals tonight.
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'Best experience'
John Fleck has followed his Scottish international uncle Robert to Rangers FC, and last summer, aged 15, joined the first team on a tour of Germany and in January made his senior competitive debut in a Scottish Cup tie. He has been captaining the Scotland squad for two seasons, and is leading them in their first-ever U17 finals campaign. "It's been great," Fleck told uefa.com. "We showed something when we got here, we proved a point, something our team had never done before in Scotland." And as for skippering the side: "It's probably the best experience I've had. For me to be the captain of the team makes me proud, my family's proud of me so it's great for me."
Improvement
The 2-0 loss to Serbia was a disappointing way to start, but they were unfortunate to go down 1-0 against hosts Turkey on Wednesday and that gives them hope for tonight's game at the Mardan Sport Complex. "It's been great to be here, great to get to the last eight and hopefully we'll get through to the next stage," Fleck said. "The first games was a very poor performance, there wasn't a team performance. The last game was a great game, I thought we played a lot better, thought we deserved more than we got. If we play the way we played the other night I'm sure that we'll something from [tonight's] game. We've just got to try our best and see what happens."
Level head
Fleck, whose parents are out in Antalya watching the finals, credits his father rather than his well-known uncle as his football mentor, but the combination of his family name and his prodigious performances at youth level have won his considerable attention already. "I started at Rangers when I was eight," Fleck said. "Obviously I've made my first team debut and hopefully I'll keep improving. There was a bit of press about me in Scotland but I try to bypass it and not pay too much attention to it. There's a few people who know me in Scotland because my uncle played for Rangers and the name just carries on."