Interview: Kim Little, footballer and Scotland international

You’re 21 years old and a free-scoring wonder for the best women’s football team in Britain. You have been described, at various times over the last few years, as “world class” and “phenomenal”, your limits are “boundless” and your assault on the record books “relentless”. You’ve got 60 international caps to your name. You came to Arsenal at 16 to replace a legend, Kelly Smith – not that anybody thought that there was another Smith in the world. She, too, was “world class” and “phenomenal”. That’s why she went to America to play. But nobody talks about Kelly Smith at Arsenal any more. They talk instead of a soft-spoken young Aberdonian called Kim Little.

Most of your team-mates are talking about the Olympic Games in London next summer. They want to be part of it. They’re desperate to be in the squad. You want to be, too. Only there is a problem. Your national association would rather you didn’t. Something about FIFA and threat to Scotland’s independence, something else about the Tartan Army getting upset. Soon, the Team GB women’s team manager, Hope Powell, is going to send out letters asking if players are available to play. Little will get one and she will say yes, bring it on.

In September, Little announced her intention to declare for the Olympics. She understands the complications of it but still she wants to play. “When I said that I was available, I got a few messages on Twitter,” she says. “Nothing too bad, but just some stuff that said that I shouldn’t be making myself available. The messages came from passionate Scots, I suppose. I took it on the chin. I know there is a bit of debate going on at home about it, but you don’t get to see or hear much of it living here in London. I heard that Steven Naismith and James Forrest have said they’re interested.

“My position is that I want to play in it. I think it would be an incredible thing to do. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. I don’t think it would do any harm, I really don’t. I know what people are saying, but I don’t see it the way they do. ”

Olympic football at Wembley? Let’s take a trip back in time to an innocent era. Here we are with Team Great Britain at the 1948 Olympic football competition. That’s the coach over there, Matt Busby is his name. And there’s Ronnie Simpson of Queen’s Park in goal, shouting orders at his defenders, Angus Carmichael and James McColl. Up ahead of them are Dougie McBain, John Boyd and Andy Aitken. There’s a Scottish spine in this team as they go about their business, against Holland at Highbury, against France at Craven Cottage, against Yugoslavia and Denmark at Wembley. Edged out for a bronze were Busby’s boys.

Sixty three years have passed and barely a word has been spoken about them. That will change, of course. As the Olympics draw nearer there is sure to be a nostalgia trip at some stage, a recollection of the early Busby, a comparison between the world of football back then and the uncontrollable beast we see today. There won’t be as many Scots in 2012 as there were in 1948, but there will be one at least. Little may have a large presence in this tournament despite the SFA.

From a Scottish perspective, this thing has a way to run. Against the wishes of Hampden, Naismith has made himself available for selection for the men’s team, but probably won’t be picked. James Forrest said he wouldn’t mind a call, but he might have second thoughts if the invitation came and the reality of his situation dawned on him. The SFA don’t want their players involved for two reasons. Firstly, they don’t want to give FIFA any encouragement to challenge their status as an independent country. Secondly, they don’t want their players exposed to the possible repercussions of playing for Team GB – the bad blood and booing when they come home and get on with their normal footballing lives.

Naismith, Forrest, Charlie Adam, Barry Bannan, Allan McGregor, Steven Fletcher. None will be as sought after by Team GB, as essential to the heartbeat of the men’s team, as Little will be to the women’s side.

For the last three and a half years she has set the Arsenal ladies team alight with her brilliance. She is as critical to Powell’s side as Gareth Bale might be to Stuart Pearce’s. Consider what Little has done in her time at Arsenal. Little is a creator and goal-scorer. “I love watching Xavi and Iniesta and Fabregas playing,” she says, before checking herself. “Fabregas doesn’t play for Arsenal anymore, so maybe I shouldn’t say him, but you know what I mean? Small, attacking players who set up goals and score goals. That’s what I try to do.”

It’s not what she tries to do, it is what she does. Three and a half years ago she left Hibernian Ladies and moved to Arsenal full-time. She made her Arsenal debut at 17. Scored 47 goals in 36 games the season before last and got 12 goals in 18 appearances last season. She has scored in the women’s FA Cup final, scored in her 50th cap for Scotland, against England, scored so many goals that she has won awards all over the place, including the best of them all, an accolade from her fellow pros and semi-pros, the players’ player of the year in 2010.

She’s only 21, admits to having settled in the Big Smoke now, having missed her mother and father and little brother to begin with. They’re up the road in Mintlaw in Aberdeenshire. She has finished a college course and has a part-time job at the club. Football has consumed her. Arsenal is the centre of her universe.

“It’s the best place I could possibly be. We’re treated so well here. We use the same training complex as the men. Them in the morning and us in the evening. We don’t see too much of them but you’ll get some sending a few Tweets before big games. At the start of the season we get our team photographs taken at the same time, so that’s exciting. Seeing the likes of Robin van Persie is an inspiration. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Star of the Arsenal. And soon, you fancy, the Belle of Britain.