‘My face was twitching’: Rickie Lambert describes what it was like to score the winner for England vs Scotland at Wembley on his debut

Two minutes and 43 seconds was all it took for Rickie Lambert to score on his England debut in August 2013, the striker heading in the winning goal in a 3-2 victory against Scotland with his first touch of the match.

While only a friendly game, set-up as part of the Football Association's 150th anniversary celebrations, Lambert expresses his emotion in vivid detail to FourFourTwo when remembering the finish. 

"My whole career was about proving people wrong," Lambert tells FFT. "I wanted to show I deserved to be in the squad. 

"Mentally, I was on it all week in training and I think the other England players were surprised by my technical ability and touch. I was thinking, ‘Please give me game time’. After the match, my face was twitching – I couldn’t believe what had just happened."

Lambert continued the fine form that earned him his first England callup during the 2013/14 Premier League season with Southampton, scoring 13 goals in 37 matches. Roy Hodgson selected him for the 2014 World Cup squad as a result, the culmination of a journeyed career through the lower tiers of English football.

Before leaving for Brazil, Liverpool paid £4 million to sign him from Southampton. After being released by the club as a teenager, Lambert wanted to take the opportunity with both hands after returning from the World Cup. 

Looking back now, though, he says he pushed himself too hard physically for a 32-year-old returning from the 2014 World Cup. 

"Brendan Rodgers offered me four weeks off after the World Cup," he explained to FFT, "but I wanted to get as fit as I could be, so after two weeks I went back with the youth team to really push myself. 

"After a few weeks, I felt tired. We trained very hard when [Mauricio] Pochettino was Saints’ manager but by now I was in my thirties. As the campaign began, I was going backwards.

"I wanted to do so well for Liverpool, but it didn’t happen. I’d always had back problems; at Saints they had a way of looking after my body, but it was different at Liverpool with European football added to the mix as well. I had several epidurals in my spine, and I knew I’d pay a price later in life."

A move to West Brom in the summer of 2015 followed that season at Liverpool, and, as he explains, the physical stress he put himself under came back to haunt him.

"At West Brom I had blood cells injected into my spine to treat an injury, which reduced my movement. I wasn’t at Premier League level any more. I moved to Cardiff and they offered me out on loan. I knew it was all over. 

"Reflecting now, my head wasn’t right when I left Liverpool – and when I retired, I wanted to get away from football. Now the dust has settled, I look back on my career with pride."