England and Tottenham Hotspur winger Andros Townsend thriving on 'last chance' ahead of World Cup "But this season I said: "I want to give it one final crack at Spurs and see if I'm good enough to make it."" So far, so very good. With Tottenham Hotspur's record signing Erik Lamela taking time to settle, and Aaron Lennon injured, Townsend has seized his opportunity and played regularly, And with Arsenal's Theo Walcott being hampered by injury, he has taken that chance with England as well. After just two caps, blooded in high-stakes World Cup qualifiers and not friendlies, he was already being spoken about as a likely member of Roy Hodgson's World Cup squad. Townsend will hope to earn a fourth appearance in Tuesday's prestige match against Germany. Suddenly his career has accelerated as quickly as he does down that wing. But then few players have taken to international football - and the pressure of being at a Champions League contender - in as uninhibited fashion as Townsend. "I'm not really a player that gets too worried about pressure, I put pressure on myself but it's more a case of going into games excited rather than thinking: "I've got to do something." I just go out there and try to play with freedom. I know that when everyone's playing I'm only one game away from getting dropped. So I've just taken the attitude that this could be my last game so I'm going to try and make the most of it. It is a significant boost that Spurs head coach Andre Villas-Boas - and England manager Roy Hodgson - share such confidence in him. Indeed Villas-Boas made it clear to Townsend last summer that, despite the arrivals of Lamela and Nacer Chadli, he would be going nowhere. "He said from day one that he wanted me to be more involved this season," Townsend recalls. He said he saw my time at QPR and thought I had a future at Spurs and did not want to sell me, that gave me the confidence. He has been let go by Spurs before. Aged just 15 Townsend was told he had no future at the club and could leave. Twenty-four hours later, in one of those strange quirks of fate, it was the coaching staff that were gone. Their replacements - John McDermott and Chris Ramsey - reversed it. "I remember getting told one day that I was being released and then the next being told I was back in," Townsend says. I'd grown up a Spurs fan so to be told you're not good enough is obviously heartbreaking. He was determined to be as professional as he could - and recalls his first loan spell, at League One Yeovil Town, where he made his senior debut aged 17, along with another Spurs loanee, Jonathan Obika. The pair took an electric stove with them so they could cook for each other in the hotel they were staying in and make sure they ate properly. "I just cooked the basics," Townsend says. Like pasta, anything with pasta in. Did the hotel know? "No, we just snuck it in, we were hiding it in a cupboard," Townsend says. Still it was indicative. As was the telling off he received at Spurs - for training too much. "When I was in the youth team me and a few others would hide footballs behind cupboards and sneak out in the afternoons and work on our weaker foot," Townsend says. I got into trouble various times for that. These sports scientists and physios are so much into knowing the body they didn't want me pushing myself too far. Townsend was in more serious trouble earlier this year, however, when he was banned by the Football Association for a breach of their rules on betting. It meant he missed the under-21 European Championships: he declines to discuss it now, although he does admit the experience was "heartbreaking." The furore over Hodgson's joke about "Nasa space monkeys" - which led to allegations of racism - is also placed off limits by the FA. I think I've said all that's needed to be said on the subject. I don't want to give it any more news time," is the response from Townsend, who strongly defended Hodgson throughout the affair. However both incidents serve as a warning of the level of interest and scrutiny Townsend will have to deal with, especially if his career does continue to burgeon and he does go to Brazil. "You have to stick to normality as much as possible," Townsend says. And not get carried away with all the hype because that's obviously the beginning of the end. The hype will, however, inevitably grow if Townsend does make the squad - and he has allowed himself to dare to dream. If only a little. "Now I have got my foot through the door with my first caps, I can kind of taste it," he says. I don't want to think in 10 or 15 years about what could have been, if only I had played well against Chile and Germany.