When Dom Dwyer received news that he had been called up by the United States national team, the first person back in England he phoned was not a family member - but his best friend since the age of nine.

Sam Gaughran joined the Norwich City academy at the same time as Dwyer - they both went for the same trials for the under-10s - and the pair shared a car with their respective parents four days a week from nearby King's Lynn to the club and back again.

The friends were also released by Norwich together five years later but they remained close and it was Gaughran who not only got Dwyer onto the books of King's Lynn FC - at a time he was playing "pub standard football" - but, far more significantly, to the trial in 2009 that would change his life forever.

Gaughran moved on to Peterborough United but fearing he would not be given a professional contract he went for a trial for a soccer scholarship at Tyler Junior College in Texas and was offered a place.

But when Gaughran told Peterborough, for whom he now works as an academy coach, of his intentions to leave for the States, he was promptly handed a deal with the club.