Competing at Wembley is often said to be the fulfilment of a childhood dream, but for Reading’s centre-back Alex Pearce Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final at the national stadium will feel more like a re-enactment of a childhood reality. Pearce could be pitted again against Theo Walcott, whom he first faced when the pair were 12. “I used to play for a team called Vale of White Horse and he played for his team in Newbury and we came up against each other a couple of times,” says the Oxfordshire-bred Pearce, before joking, “I walked all over him.” Within only a few years of those clashes Walcott was on his way to the World Cup with England having completed a multimillion-pound transfer...
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