ENGLAND RECALL
Djed Spence Got the Second Recall
Djed Spence walked back into the England squad this week and the national newspapers still found space for four transfer rumours about full backs we have never signed and one think piece about a centre half we have never heard of. We have been here before. We know how this film ends. The only difference is that this time we are not going to let them rewrite it into a footnote. Spence earned the cap. The least the coverage can do is put his name in the headline.
The call up that was supposed to happen, finally did
There is a particular kind of joy that only Tottenham supporters understand, and it is the joy of watching a player the rest of the country gave up on become undeniable. On Sunday morning, the England social channels posted the squad for the October camp and there, at left back, was Djed Spence. Not on the standby list. Not in the under-21s. In the senior squad, as a recognised option at wing back, with two clean sheets behind him in our last three league games and a goal contribution that does not show up on the spreadsheet people keep quoting about us.
For a long time I thought this moment would not come. Not because Spence did not deserve it, but because the infrastructure around the story seemed determined to sand it down. He was the kid we loaned out four times in two seasons. He was the player the previous regime forgot existed. He was the name on the team sheet that half the match going support had given up on by the time the first whistle blew against Aston Villa in August. We had all seen the highlights, the awkward loans, the clip of him being told to stay behind after training. We had all written the post that begins I want to be wrong about him.
Then De Zerbi arrived and the whole thing changed. Not because the manager talked him up in press conferences, although he has, but because the system finally asked Spence to do the things he has always been good at. Get high and wide. Drive past the full back. Stand the cross up. Get back behind the ball and defend the box. There is nothing complicated about it. There never was. The complicated part was finding a manager who trusted him to do it.
The Premier League table, and why nobody in it wants to talk about him
The interesting thing about an England call up, when the player in question plays for us, is how quickly the conversation gets steered away from the player. You can scroll through the major outlets for an hour and find three paragraphs on Spence buried beneath a thousand words on Cole Palmer's hamstring, four columns on whether the manager should drop Jude Bellingham for a friendly, and a think piece asking if the left back position is a problem for the national team. It is a problem, apparently, that requires a £60 million solution from overseas, rather than the solution we have been growing in our own academy and rebuilding on the touchline of the Hotspur Way training pitch.
This is the part that winds me up. We are not asking for a parade. We are asking for the coverage to be proportionate. A player wins his first cap in September, goes back to his club, plays two more outstanding matches, and gets recalled. That is a story. It is a story about resilience, about a manager who knows what he is doing, about a club that has, for once, kept a player it should have kept. Instead the back page goes to a rumour about a right back we are not signing, and the byline on the Spence piece is below the fold on page 47.
I have made my peace with the fact that the league does not love us. I have made my peace with the fact that every refereeing decision, every VAR check, every schedule change seems to bend slightly against us. What I will not make my peace with is the idea that one of our own, a boy from Wolverhampton who came through Middlesbrough's academy and refused to give up when everyone around him told him to, has to fight for column inches he has already earned on the pitch.
De Zerbi has done what we hired him to do, and this is exhibit A
There is a section of the support that is still waiting to be convinced about Roberto De Zerbi. I understand it. He is not Thomas Frank, and the romantic in all of us liked the symmetry of a man who coached the youth teams coming back to manage the first team. I liked it too. But we are not here to like our manager. We are here to win football matches and, more importantly, to build something that lasts longer than a transfer window. De Zerbi is doing the second thing. Spence is the proof.
Think about what the manager has actually changed. He has looked at a squad full of players that nobody in this country rated, and he has picked the ones who fit his idea. Not the ones who fit the idea the Premier League has of what a Tottenham player should look like. Not the ones who fit the idea the media has of who is allowed to grow. He has looked at Spence, at Pape Sarr, at Luca Williams-Barnett, and he has decided that the answer to the question of how we get out of the bottom half is to develop the players we already have, not to buy new ones every summer. The academy is finally the spine of the team, and the manager is the one who laid it out.
That is why the England call up matters. It is not just a personal milestone for Spence, although it absolutely is. It is a vindication of a project. When Thomas Tuchel picks our left back, he is not just picking our left back. He is picking a system that made him ready. He is picking a coaching staff that took a kid on loan at Rennes and turned him into a senior international. He is picking a club that, for once, did the right thing at the right time.
The film we have all seen before, and how this ending is different
I have been to enough tournaments with England to know the script. Local lad gets the call. Local lad plays well in the first game. Local lad gets dropped for the second game because the manager wants experience. Local lad comes on in the 88th minute against a team we should be beating. Local lad is described as a squad player, a useful option, a man for the future. The script is older than I am. I have written the column about it twice.
But the script depends on the club not pushing back. The script depends on the player being grateful for the call up rather than demanding the start. The script depends on nobody in the wider game saying the obvious thing, which is that Djed Spence is, on current form, the best attacking left back in the country. Not the best attacking left back at the under-21s. Not the best attacking left back outside the top six. The best attacking left back. Period.
We are in a position now where we can break the script. We have a manager who plays the same way for club and country. We have a player who is fit, in form, and confident. We have a fan base that is, finally, willing to say the thing out loud rather than whisper it into a podcast that nobody listens to. The only thing we do not have is the support of the press box, and we have never had that, and we are not going to start waiting for it now.
What I will be watching on Tuesday night
England play on Tuesday evening, and I will be there. Not at the ground, because the tickets cost more than my mortgage and the allocation for the away end at Wembley is roughly three seats and a tambourine, but I will be on the sofa with the volume turned down so I can hear the commentary without hearing the analysis. I want to see the warm up. I want to see the moment his name is read out. I want to see the camera pan to the bench when the team is announced, because there will be a brief shot of the coaching staff and one of the analysts will be smiling, and I want to know which one of them is the one who made the call to keep him in the building two summers ago.
I want to see the first tackle. Not the first highlight reel dribble, although those will come, but the first moment he has to put his body on the line for the shirt. Because that is the moment that wins over a crowd, and that is the moment that the headlines will not write about the next morning. They will write about the goal, or the assist, or the one moment of skill that fits neatly into a thirty second clip. They will not write about the throw in he won in the 63rd minute, or the cross he blocked in the 71st, or the run he made into the channel to take a pass that was never going to come. Those moments are why he is in the squad. They are also why we are winning again.
If he plays, and I think he will, then the story stops being about whether he deserves to be there. It becomes about what comes next. A World Cup year is on the horizon. There is a tournament in North America at the end of the season. The manager has to pick a squad. The first name on the team sheet, at left back, should be a Tottenham player. Not because of where he is from, not because of what the media thinks of him, but because he is, right now, in October 2026, the best in the country at what he does.
The part of the story the back pages will not print
Here is what I want on the record. Djed Spence is not a redemption arc that the press has been generous enough to notice. He is a player who got dropped by a previous manager, loaned out four times in two seasons, told he had no future at the club, and came back. He sat in the stands. He played for the under-21s. He went on a pre season tour where he was listed as a right back, then a left back, then a wing back, then a makeweight in a deal that never happened. He did not complain. He did not give an interview. He did not leak anything to the press. He trained.
When De Zerbi arrived, he had a conversation with Spence that lasted, by all accounts, about four minutes. The manager told him the system. The manager told him the role. The manager told him the standard. The player said yes. The player has not looked back. The next time you see a list of the most improved players in the league, and you will not see him on it because the compilers do not watch us, remember that this is what improvement looks like. It is not a transfer. It is not a fee. It is a man, a manager, and a clear idea of what the job is.
We are going to get less coverage of this than we deserve. We always do. The back page belongs to a player we have never heard of who is about to sign for a club we have no interest in, and the byline on the Spence piece will be three columns wide and appear on a Tuesday, when nobody reads the papers anyway. I have stopped waiting for the moment the country catches up. I have started writing it down instead. So here it is, in case you missed it: we have an international left back, a manager who built him, and a project that finally, finally, makes sense. Read that in the back pages, if you can find the page.