However, it could have been over before it began when Earnshaw was 15.

“I was playing for GE Wales in Caerphilly and it was a game where we played a rival and it was tough. They were extra rough on me and players came through and kicked my shin and I broke my leg.”

“I fought back three months later, I was back and I was playing for GE Wales in Treforest. Luckily enough the Cardiff youth team with Gavin Tait was playing on the next pitch.”

“I scored a hat trick on that day and it was one of my best games. what I didn’t know was the Cardiff manager Tait was looking over and he was watching. The games finished and he came over to say hello, the next minute he was asking me to come to training with Cardiff.”

In May 2002, three months after missing out on playing against Argentina through injury. Earnshaw was again called up for Mark Hughes’s squad, to make his debut against the Germans who would make the World Cup Final two months later against Brazil

The Cardiff City striker would start the game and go on to score the winner 12 seconds after half-time for a famous Wales victory.

“You work so hard, you put in so much. I just wanted to get on the pitch, over 60,000 there it was a great time because when you step in and you are a young player.”

“I looked to the side of me and I’m looking at Ryan Giggs and I’m thinking wow. The other side of me you’ve got Gary Speed, Robbie Savage, John Hartson, Craig Bellamy next to you and funnily enough Chris Coleman; his last game was my first game.”

“These are the people I looked up to when I was a young lad, watching TV and I wanted to be here.”

“It was unbelievable, your first game against Germany and you think wow, not only are you looking at your team (but) you look across and you have Oliver Kahn to beat (laughs).

“It was really special, when you have a dream and to be able to have a chance to do that it’s so hard to describe but it’s like a fulfilment, it’s something that captures you.”

Having ended his playing career with the Whitecaps in January 2016, the former striker who scored a hat trick at every level in England, including the FA Cup, League Cup and at international level would join up with the Canadian side as a under-14s coach before joining the Californian side in April last year.