When men such as Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho look you in the eye and tell you they think you should do something, it's probably quite difficult to take it as a mere suggestion. It's more akin to a papal bull; something not to be ignored.

"Sir Alex Ferguson was keen for Scott to play for Scotland as well," Scott McTominay's grandfather said earlier this month. "He was up front about it. I know that for a fact. I can say that without fear of getting contradicted. That has been kept under wraps. He and Jose Mourinho were both quite keen on it over the last month or two."

But McTominay's decision to play international football for Scotland rather than England -- to play for the nation of his family rather than his birth -- was not merely directed by Ferguson's and Mourinho's preferences.

"I wanted to play for Scotland -- and I always have done, since I was a young boy, so it was an incredibly proud moment when he [Scotland manager Alex McLeish] did call me up," the Manchester United midfielder said this week.

That's the emotional part of the decision. Then there was the matter of who seemed to want him more too.

"McLeish made a huge effort getting to Carrington to meet up with him, because it was in the middle of the bad weather that we had," Brian McClair, who coached McTominay at the United academy, told the BBC. "He made it, put a case. Gareth Southgate sent him a text."