Adam Wharton has grown used to the extraordinary over the course of this season as he has bolted from Blackburn in the Championship to Crystal Palace in the Premier League to England at Euro 2024. But the scene on Thursday night, as England took stock in their dressing room after the 1-1 draw against Denmark, had to have been an eye-opener.
“He was just trying to keep us all positive,” Wharton says. “He was saying: ‘It’s not the end of the world.’” The 20-year-old midfielder is not talking about the manager, Gareth Southgate, or a senior member of the squad. He is talking about Prince William, who had swept in to see the players in his role as the Football Association president, the corridors having been cleared, connecting doors locked, bodyguards prominent.
The heir to England’s midfield throne betrays no emotion. It is Wharton’s default setting. And as the fires rage at home, the country fretting over the poverty of the Denmark performance, the pundits fuming, the problems everywhere, it does not take long in Wharton’s company to see him as an antidote. Or maybe the answer.
Southgate needs a deep-lying midfielder to play with Declan Rice. It is probably fair to say that his “Declan with who?” soundbite has been flogged to death and he updated it after the Denmark game. “We have been trying to find a solution in midfield for seven or eight years,” Southgate said. “If we hadn’t had Declan for the last few years, I don’t know where we’d have been. Unfortunately Kalvin Phillips wasn’t a possible for us for this tournament and Jordan Henderson the same, so we’re trying to find something different.”
As Southgate looks forward to Tuesday’s final group game against Slovenia, fighting to remind everyone that England have four points and are well set to qualify, it has felt as though his most likely change will be in midfield because it has not really happened for Trent Alexander-Arnold.
England need someone alongside Rice who is cool on the ball, who can move it quickly and incisively; who knows how to position himself out of possession, to cut off the spaces for the opposition. Could it be Wharton? The more he spoke on Saturday, the detail so rich, the more it seemed to make sense. Southgate’s other options are Conor Gallagher and Kobbie Mainoo.
“I don’t really look at those comments [from Southgate],” Wharton says. “I just play how I play and I know that if I do that then I can help the team get forward, move the ball down the pitch, beat the press.
“If I was to describe my game I would just say: ‘It’s pretty simple but effective.’ I’ve been playing a lot deeper in the midfield in the Premier League. If you’ve got great players in attack, the Bellinghams, the Fodens, then you have to get them in the pockets. All I want to do if you’ve got players like that is give them the ball because that’s when they come alive to produce bits of magic.”
It is impossible not to be assaulted by Wharton’s nervelessness. He made his debut for the England under-21s only in March – as a substitute against Luxembourg – and he has one senior cap, having come off the bench in the friendly against Bosnia and Herzegovina at the beginning of the month.
Wharton acknowledges the pressure that is bearing down on the squad. “It’s a lot different to what I’ve experienced and rightly so because this is a big event,” he says. “You feel it, especially at the games – the atmosphere is different, a lot louder, the fans are all up for it. There is just more riding on it. The whole nation is watching.”
But there is a difference between awareness and being inhibited. When Wharton explains why he knows he can handle it, there is a chance that his words could be read as sounding arrogant. His real-time delivery is nothing of the sort. It is simply measured, matter-of-fact.
“I have got belief that no matter who, where, when I play football, I can affect a game,” Wharton says. “You have to think like that. If I think I can’t handle this, then what am I doing here? I haven’t really had any nerves. I am just playing football and I have done it all my life. If I do it every day, why can’t I do it for the next three weeks?
“I have always been confident in my ability because I try and live a game in my head as much as with my feet. Whether that is making a movement to move the opposition so someone else can get the ball or trying to think a couple of passes ahead so when I do get the ball, I already know where I am going to play. If people think that is special then maybe it is but for me it is normal.”
Wharton cites Rodri as the best in the world in his position while Toni Kroos and Luka Modric also come up, mainly because Southgate has said on more than one occasion that he would love to have a tempo-setter in that mould. Wharton says he takes tips from watching both.
When was the last time that he spotted something to absorb from a rival? “Probably on Friday night from [N’Golo] Kanté for France against the Netherlands,” Wharton says. “There were a few movements from him off the ball – nothing much but just short, sharp off players to receive it.”
Wharton is ready to show what he has got.
