After becoming a parent, after earning a place in the table-topping team, after a stellar player-of-the-match performance in a high-profile game and after providing one of the Champions League highlights of the week, Curtis Jones has another milestone occasion in his sights: a first senior international cap for England.
At the age of 23, it’s hardly before time. Indeed, given the discourse and dissatisfaction over the Three Lions’ midfield over the last few years, it might in fact seem odd to some that a Liverpool regular with almost 150 games under his belt might only now get a shot at earning a first cap.
It’s not that he doesn’t have a body of work in an England shirt behind him either. Jones was the goalscorer – officially, if not entirely purposefully – as England beat Spain to triumph in last year’s final of the Uefa Under-21 Championship. He was also in the extended England squad before Euro 2024 in the summer, cut along with teammate Jarell Quansah and others, without partaking in any of the warm-up games. And, most recently, he was included in the October squad, though that was only as a late call-up when others pulled out, before his own withdrawal due to the imminent birth of his child.
But after another handful of standout showings since then, a key performer as Liverpool moved clear at the top of both Premier League and Champions League, Jones is finally in the squad on merit – and from the beginning.
So what will England get from him? A bit of everything, in interim manager Lee Carsley’s mind.
“Curtis is an all-around player, plays in various positions. I highly rate him, he’s one of the best I’ve worked with in terms of ability. He’s shown consistency to play every week at a high level. He’s shown he can score goals and assist,” he said in his squad announcement press conference.
But that undersells to a wild extent the level Jones has been performing at.
For a very basic example – and with the caveats that it’s still relatively few games and comparatively few minutes – there’s no midfielder in the Premier League with a better pass completion rate than his 95 per cent.
Put into more real terms, Jones simply doesn’t lose the ball. Whether that’s finding the feet of teammates, progressing himself into space or turning away from challenges deep in his own half, his close control and impressive upper-body strength make him a nightmare to dispossess, but also a nightmare to try and dispossess: if he turns you, he’s gone and has the vision and execution in his ball-playing to exploit the gap left behind.
While Cole Palmer might have recently named Virgil van Dijk as the toughest opponent he’s faced, it was Jones who taught him a lesson in how to shut down a positional rival while still impacting in attack, when the Reds beat Chelsea in late October.
Jones isn’t the fastest player on the pitch. He’s not the most direct player at heading to goal, he doesn’t indulge in dramatic sliding tackles, he’s not a 15-a-season goalscorer from deep. Yet he can, and does, do everything.
Jurgen Klopp developed him from an attacking playmaker at youth level into a controlling, careful retainer of the ball as a senior midfielder; now under Arne Slot, with Liverpool’s midfield again responsible for creative duties and supporting the attack, Jones’s all-round game is very much on show.
An outrageous assist against Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League underlined not just his weight of pass but his movement; another last weekend against Brighton owed far more to Mohamed Salah’s unstoppable strike in becoming an assist, but before that had already highlighted Jones’s ball-carrying, timing of the pass and much-improved decision-making.
The thing is, he’s been playing at this level, or close to it, before. Last season across winter and the turn of the year he was in sensational form and would surely have been in the running for a first call-up and cap in the March international break – only for injury to rob him of both that and a place in the Carabao Cup final, where the Reds again beat Chelsea.
That has been a recurring theme for Jones.
Just shy of 150 games would surely have been well over 200 by now had he not suffered the usual absences – a few soft tissue and muscle injuries – but also a bizarre collection of improbable ones: concussion in pre-season, being poked in the eye and unable to play for two months, a leg bone stress “response” that sidelined him for longer, coronavirus, a three-game suspension for a hotly debated red card.
He has also lost his place at times when performance levels drop; normal for a young player, but he’s now leaving that age group behind and consistency must become his watchword, as Slot has suggested.
“Since that moment he became a father he started putting great performances in. He already did this in the first weeks we played together – in preseason I was like ‘phwoar, quality player’ but his performances then dropped a bit. Since he became a father he’s outstanding again.
“Confidence is an important tool and that’s what he has and he combines this at the moment with an incredibly hard work rate. We can trust him in defence, you saw how well he played against Cole Palmer. So he’s quite complete but for him now it’s all about consistency.”
Those self- or injury-enforced absences have often come at untimely moments, be it for club or country progression, but perhaps this time his game, his body and his opportunity are finally aligned.
England have been crying out for the man in the middle to give them calmness, control and creativity; in Carsley’s final games in charge, he might just have called up the one who can provide it all.
