Hungry

Liam Cooper said this week that he was always confident that the single game he played for Scotland U19s in September 2009, after four games for the U17s, wouldn't be his last for his country.

"I’ve always believed I would get back into the set-up," he said. "I’m very confident in my ability. I think my game suits international football. In the back of my head I was always confident of stepping up to represent my country."

And now that's what he's doing, hoping Steve Clarke picks him from the squad to play Russia or Belgium. But despite his confidence, he must have wondered if this day would come, if not after leaving Hull City to play in League Two for Chesterfield, then the more his age crept upwards; 28 is late to be making an international debut.

His transfer to Leeds in the meanwhile might have been a boost, but it took a long time for anyone watching Cooper to have the same confidence he has in himself; he must have known that, too.

I've grazed through some of my old match reports for mentions of the early Cooper at Leeds, and I was quite impressed by his first two games, thinking he combined, 'all the defensive solidity we need, with a continental ability to dribble upfield and pass'; I'd seen what it took Marcelo Bielsa years to see — well, it probably took him about two minutes, but you know what I mean — and I'm claiming that. I was already wondering why Giuseppe Bellusci, signed at the same time, was getting in the team ahead of him. After that? Well:

'That the ball bounced into the net off Cooper's foot shouldn't be taken as an indication that he was somehow close to preventing the goal'

'Cooper was sent off for a second yellow card that was so inarguable it was almost boring. In keeping with the game it wasn't violent, or malicious, or outrageous, it was just sad.'

'The best chance of the first half fell to Cooper, who almost turned the day into a full on festival of last season by testing his keeper's reflexes with a close range flick'

'Cooper seemed to be mulling over the offside rule from throw-ins so let the ball go, and Kermorgant got to it, lashing it into the top of the goal'

'I haven't yet seen a photo of Cooper re-angling his body at great height to meet Wigan's aimless cross and chest it past Silvestri, but I expect it will be indistinguishable from a freeze-frame of Lee Chapman circa 1990-93; we should treasure these links with the past'

'Cooper pulled Howson down on the edge of the six-yard box in one of those bollock-brained moments that remind you he was playing for Chesterfield in pre-season'

'Where the depths were really sunk was at the restart. The ball was played to Cooper, who looked up, and to begin Leeds' fightback, lofted it into the front row of the East Stand'

And so on. It's bizarre to read that stuff now, knowing that Cooper, somehow, survived. He was never helped by the players around him, like Bellusci, Jason Pearce, Marco Silvestri, and especially not Scott Wootton, who kept headbutting Cooper out of games; I found one reference, filled with foreboding, to a fledging partnership between Liam Cooper and Dario Del Fabro. He wasn't helped by his managers, of whom there were too many, too few of them good enough; or by Massimo Cellino, who wanted him, but nearly didn't buy him at all, putting a statement on United's website announcing the end of his interest, before watching Pearce and Wootton start the season and deciding money was no object to signing Cooper and Bellusci after all.

Getting through all that, with only Gaetano Berardi still by his side, can be put down — in both their cases — to their humanity as much as their ability. The concept of honesty gets thrown around in football clichés without much thought behind its meaning, until you meet Berardi, who simultaneously refused to join his teammates in their Sick Six fiasco while refusing to condemn them for their misguided actions, staying loyal to the club and his friends; or Cooper, who through all the mistakes and the criticism never denied the fans their opinions, never fought back against them with subtweets or spreadsheets, never let anybody doubt that he was doing the best he could. The fans only wished he would play better; while the squad, as it shed the Cellino era and improved in quality that ought to have left Cooper behind with Bellusci and Bianchi, elected him their captain.