NEW YORK – Mask-clad, marauding down the left, Djed Spence was an unlikely hero to emerge from England’s World Cup summer.
Rarely has there been so late a scramble for plane tickets as when Thomas Tuchel announced his 26-man squad in May, Spence’s family quickly following him to the United States. Jordan Henderson aside, his was the least predictable name on the list.
In the absence of sufficient forward-thinking down the middle and the lack of the edge in the wide areas, debates over Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Adam Wharton will rage on. After the briefest of glitches in the set-to with DR Congo it is telling that nobody is any longer hankering for Myles Lewis-Skelly or Lewis Hall. On the other side there is little Spence could do that would ever wholly justify Trent Alexander-Arnold’s surprise exclusion.
Tuchel’s thinking, so impenetrable to a nation learning to trust him, was this. In the very early days at youth level in Peckham, south London, Spence started life as a winger. A right-back by trade, he has been forced onto the opposite flank more often than not at Spurs this season, through an injury crisis that wiped out Ben Davies, Destiny Udogie and an unfamiliar left-back in Souza, who played just four times.
