A FOOTBALL star of the future and his family from near Oswestry have told of their delight after he was called to represent Wales at youth level.

Louie Bradbury, 13, lives near Park Hall, attends Lakelands Academy in Ellesmere and plays for nearby Shrewsbury Town's academy where he is a regular goalscorer.

And now he is set to join up with Wales under-15s ahead of a four-team tournament against Sweden, Denmark and Belgium from August 21-28, leaving dad Josh full of pride and delight.

"We found out last week – the Shrewsbury Town academy manager rang me from Spain, where he was with Town's U18s," said Josh.

"They'd had the Cymru Cup – North versus South – last month in Newport and Louie had obviously done ok in that as there was 64 lads there and they've picked a squad of 22 from that.

"He is U14 but the way they do is that it's 2008-born – it's called bio-banded – but there's only four of them who are under 14 and other 18 are under 15.

"He's done extremely well to be there.

"He qualifies for Wales through myself – me and my dad were both born in the same hospital in Towyn.

"This is the first get together that they can have.

"Louie is at Shrewsbury Town but there are some big clubs there; Liverpool and there's players from Manchester United and Everton – really big clubs – there too.

"We're so very proud of him – he played well at that thing but he's under no illusions.

"You always think there's people better but he's obviously applied himself right to get picked."

Josh said that Louie is trying to take the call-up into his stride.

He added: "He's absolutely buzzing for it – he was staying at a mate's house when he found out as I rang him as soon as I got the call at nearly 7am.

"The Cymru Cup in July was sort of trying to get them used to it – they stayed there, they put them in rooms of two and get them down for breakfast as well.

"It puts a lot of responsibility of their shoulders at 13.

"Louie is a goalscorer and a scorer of good goals really – he scored 126 goals last season which is his best return.

"This will give him a boost and hopefully take him to another level – he's signed up to the end of this season at U14s."