“Sometimes it all comes down to timing.”
Those were the words of Scotland manager Steve Clarke when he was asked about the possibility of Findlay Curtis making the starting XI for Saturday’s World Cup opener against Haiti. Like all good forwards, the 19-year-old seems to have timed his run to perfection.
Five goals in his last six games, including a maiden international strike against Curacao in the final warm-up match on home soil, are testament to that form. Barring Lawrence Shankland, his soon-to-be Rangers teammate next season, he is perhaps the most in-form member of the squad.
After impressing at Hampden before jetting out to the sweltering heat of the USA, Curtis found himself on the bench for the national side’s final game before the tournament proper. That is not necessarily an indication that he won’t be on the park for the curtain-raiser, as he did feature just after the hour mark. By then the game was petering out, with Scotland having cruised to a 4-0 half-time lead.
The main competition for his place in the side is Ben Gannon-Doak, whom he replaced on Saturday night. Although the pair tend to produce their best work on differing flanks, the question for Scotland’s famously pragmatic manager is just how ambitious he will be when holding two of the country’s young aces in his hand.
If Clarke is brave enough to unleash the deadly duo, it is certainly something to whet the appetite of anyone following along at international level.
Twenty-year-old Gannon-Doak may be just 11 months older than Curtis, but he seems to have lived a much fuller footballing life, having traversed Celtic and Liverpool before finding himself at Bournemouth. In contrast to the south-coast speedster, who is no stranger to making headlines despite his own tender years, Curtis has been propelled to centre stage almost under the radar. All to the benefit of Rangers, who may just have found themselves with one of the most exciting young players in the country on their books.
So how did the attacker go from being a bit-part, promising talent who saw only sporadic minutes under Barry Ferguson at the back end of the 24/25 campaign to being in the World Cup sticker album?
Curtis, it appears, is not a player to do things by half. He started last season with a bang, coming on in a Champions League qualifier against Panathinaikos before weaving his way through the Greeks and unleashing a devastating finish. Opening his body up and slotting into the bottom corner with his right instep is already becoming a trademark of the young forward. A crucial equaliser against St Mirren followed, but the turbulent season off the park at Ibrox was hardly the ideal breeding ground for a fledgling talent to hone his skills with any sort of consistency.
As reported by Rangers Review, it was Curtis himself who pushed for a January loan move to Kilmarnock. It may have been easy to stay in Govan and wear the moniker of “Rangers player” in name alone, but he was determined to prove his worth. Rugby Park proved an inspired choice, learning under the tutelage of former Gers winger and coach Neil McCann.
For too long at Rangers, sending a player out on loan seemed to be a kiss of death. Even this season, Jose Cifuentes, Ben Davies and Danilo (to name but a few) were all shipped out. With each of these deals there was a certain sense of kicking the can down the road; no matter how well they did in their respective spells away. Their Ibrox careers felt over, and the hope was simply that they would show enough to command a respectable fee from any suitors.
The move to Ayrshire, though, felt altogether more thought out and optimistic. This has been a strategy seldom utilised, and you’d have to cast your mind back to Allan McGregor and Charlie Adam, who paved the path before Curtis was even born. Like McGregor at Dunfermline and Adam at St Mirren, this was an opportunity for Rangers to let one of their best prospects become the star man at another side and in turn receive room to grow away from the often suffocating Ibrox atmosphere.
There are those who say that Rangers have committed the proverbial act of shooting themselves in the foot by allowing Curtis to tear it up elsewhere in the league while putting all of their eggs in a basket adorned with red and white ribbons in the form of Andreas Skov Olsen. His arrival was touted as a season-defining signing, and it was – just not in the way any Rangers fan would have hoped, as the international winger heads back to Wolfsburg as an unmitigated disaster.
Would Curtis have proved the difference maker instead of the Dane? We’ll never know. What we do know is that he will arrive back at Auchenhowie with a World Cup under his belt and some serious first-team minutes in his legs – both of which might not have happened had he not pressed for game time.
The question then arises: where will he fit into the side next season? The World Cup may be a decent indicator of what is to come for Rangers, not least because of the potential link-up between Curtis and Shankland, who will both be strutting their stuff on the Ibrox turf next term. As mentioned, Gannon-Doak blew away the cobwebs against Bolivia and will be angling for his right-wing spot against Haiti. Curtis would slot easily into the left-hand side, where he has shone for Kilmarnock in recent weeks.
Against Livingston he netted his first goal after a driving run down the left flank, sliding home a cool finish from a cross. The 3-0 victory over St Mirren was when many onlookers were moved from indifferent to impressed, as he netted a double. Both times he arrived from the left and bent efforts beyond the keeper, the second in particular a first-time stunner that was stroked home with the assurance of a player at the peak of his confidence.
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For large swathes of this season Mikey Moore adopted this left-sided role before he naturally drifted into a freer space in the centre of the park. With Moore heading back south to parent club Spurs, there is a creativity vacuum at the sharp end of the pitch. A player with Curtis’ drive and finishing would be a welcome addition to Rohl’s side, who so often last season looked devoid of incisiveness when it mattered.
His eight goals in all competitions were six more than both Oliver Antman and Nedim Bajrami and level with Thelo Aasgaard, with only Djeidi Gassama scoring more (nine) out of Rangers’ wide options. Danny Rohl will no doubt look to upgrade in that area of the pitch this summer, but Curtis must surely be in the conversation for a starting berth come the opening day.
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