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.
The fluidity of the Tottenham Hotspur full-back is such that it makes him the ideal candidate for Norway, a quarter-final by the end of which you would be hard-pushed to explain who was playing where.
In the summer of 2025, before Thomas Frank’s project quickly disintegrated, Spence was even used in a front three. That flexibility is a double-edged sword, the typical criticism being that he is too right-footed to play on the left. Against Mexico it allowed him to slot into a back five when it was backs-to-the-wall time.
Certainly there is an argument that if Spence has been a late developer, he has been as much a victim of circumstance as anything else.
Released by Fulham just shy of his 18th birthday, an alternative path might have kept him at Middlesbrough for another year, had the relationship with Neil Warnock not broken down.
He was sent on loan to Nottingham Forest, almost immediately finding himself under another change of manager. On the bridge over the Trent outside the City Ground, a graffiti tag still reads: “Djed Spence, we miss you.” That should give a feeling of where Steve Cooper took him to.
In Antonio Conte he found no such an ally. Days after joining Tottenham, his manager used a press conference to dismiss him as a “club signing” rather than a player he wanted – by reply Spence said the revelation “shattered his confidence”. Conte awarded him a total of 43 minutes. Over his next full season at Spurs after loans at Rennes, Leeds and Genoa, he played an hour of football between August and mid-December 2024. He studied French and Italian but never fully settled.
In Yorkshire it was a knee ligament injury that sent him packing after seven appearances, in Italy the Serie A side’s refusal to stump up £8m to make the deal permanent. Daniel Farke would complain of his lateness to Leeds’ training sessions. It meant little prospect of a north London renaissance, where it would take him two-and-a-half years to start a game. Four years on, he has played under five Spurs managers.
Under Roberto De Zerbi he is still not guaranteed to start, with Udogie and Pedro Porro ahead of him on the left and right respectively. Andy Robertson has arrived too, while Micky van de Ven can yet play at full-back. The make-up of the squad is closer now to Spence’s age bracket and he has forged friendships – still his future is uncertain with Everton waiting in the wings.
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The other contradiction lies in Tuchel himself, so often berating him from the sidelines in both the warm-ups and the group stages. Tuchel’s England reign will stand or fall on divisive decisions like Spence’s ticket to the US – so far they have been proven right. England are in the semi-finals for just the fourth time ever.
For now, the defender retains the role of cult figure, strapping holding together a broken jaw, unfortunate not to win a penalty against Norway. The refusal to shake hands with Thomas Partey against Ghana. He is the first Muslim to play for England at a World Cup and raises his hands in Du’a on the pitch – those close to him say his faith is central to his career.
England are being dragged towards history by the most obvious heroes in Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane. None have come from the peripheries quite like Spence to become quite so important.
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