Walker's tough start gives him resolve to prove people wrong

Fit-again defender discusses growing up on an estate with a fatal arson attack upstairs and a suicide near his door

- David Hytner

Prove people wrong, never be beaten. Each day is a new challenge, keep on pushing. "It's just been my life," Kyle Walker says, as he reflects on where the drive comes from. "Everyone writes me off and says certain things.

"When I signed for Manchester City, it was: 'I can't believe they paid that much for a full-back.' It gives me that motivation and I do like to go out and show people.

Maybe it is my upbringing. Where I grew up, you had to survive." And so from England's World Cup training base in Al Wakrah where the squad are preparing for the second group game against the USA tomorrow night, Walker is transported back to where it all started for him - the block of flats on the Lansdowne estate in Sharrow to the south-west of Sheffield.

Walker has the stories to tell and they involve the kind of things that kids ought never to see. Nobody should. A crazed woman rushing around in a motorcycle helmet wielding an axe. A fatal arson attack. A suicide next to his front door. There is a point when Walker stops talking and there is just silence, incomprehension from his audience.

"The fire was bad and also someone hung on the stairs that I was going up, that was on my landing to get up," Walker says. "They were probably the ones that stick in my mind. Someone hung himself. I didn't know him. I was 12 or 13. I didn't see him hang himself because the police blacked it off. It was right next to my house.

"With the fire, someone chucked petrol through the door and a match and that was it. The kids got out. The caretakers caught them on some blankets. The mum threw them out [of the window]. But she was a biggish lady and she couldn't get out."

Nobody speaks for a good few seconds. "I wouldn't say it's part and parcel of growing up because no one should experience that," Walker continues.