Jay Stansfield isn’t much of a talker. A quiet, unassuming character, it was easy for the 22-year-old to blend into the background in the early stages of this tournament.
That’s been a place that’s been hard for Stansfield to find at club level, what with a £15million move to Birmingham City making him the most expensive League One player ever. Jeered by opposing fans at every ground and labelled a ‘waste of money’ at every missed chance, going away with England has proved quite the departure.
Stansfield touched down in Slovakia with just three England Under-21 caps to his name, his most recent in March 2024, and observers of Lee Carsley’s group noted how it took him a day or two to bring himself up to speed.
That’s not a knock on Stansfield either. Of all the outfield players in this squad it is Stansfield that was playing at the lowest-ranked level last season in League One. Here he quickly found himself in high-intensity training sessions with Champions League pedigree talent.
But after thriving in the spotlight in his first start of the tournament, Stansfield’s days in the background look to be numbered. Now he stands firmly centre stage in England’s bid to win back-to-back Euros.
This is Stansfield’s first tournament for England and at 22 he knows there are no guarantees he will get another one.
So to see him empty the tank across 81 minutes against Spain, an energiser bunny that was a complete pest all evening for the Spanish, was to see a player that has been waiting for his chance to make a point.
Mail Sport can reveal that Stansfield covered 10.1 kilometres in Trnava, 1.2km of which was at ‘high intensity’.
Stansfield also recorded 194 intensive actions – determined as accelerations and decelerations – which was the most of any player in an England shirt on the night.
His high intensity running was also a team high. Having been patient for his chance, Carsley got every last drop out of Stansfield.
‘Jay was outstanding and more than deserved his opportunity,’ Carsley said.
‘Jay’s a very, very unselfish striker, the way that he presses, the way that he puts defenders under pressure.
‘You want him to have that much energy though when he’s in front of goal because he can’t do all the other side of the game and not get the rewards. But I thought he was outstanding.’
Stansfield is understated, rarely one to hype up his own performances and that job once again fell on team-mates who were seen lauding him on the pitch and near the team bus after Saturday night’s 3-1 win.
‘He made everyone around him a better player,’ Channel 4 pundit Joe Cole mused afterwards. Nobody in England’s dressing room disagreed.
There are Jamie Vardy-like tendencies to the way Stansfield presses like a man possessed at times and that has been a trait that England lacked in a group stage where they struggled to find any sort of rhythm in attack.
No Liam Delap complicated things for Carsley. Operating two false nines in a 4-2-2-2 system was the decision he made and Marseille’s Jonathan Rowe, who looks much more comfortable playing wide on the left, got the three group stage starts up top, all without a goal.
Stansfield waited for his chance, coming on late in the 3-1 win over Czech Republic and in the 0-0 draw with Slovenia. He got a half to show what he was about in the 2-1 loss to Germany but found it tough.
But the message being passed on during England training sessions has long been that big moments will arrive for every player and in his 50th appearance of the season for club and country, Stansfield answered the call just as Carsley knew he would.
‘He’s had a good season at Birmingham and one of the big things for me that’s most impressive is the pressure he has had to deal with,’ Carsley told Mail Sport.
‘They paid a lot of money for him, got that promotion under his belt, scored a lot of goals so I think him bringing that to this squad is a big thing for us.’
He answered the call against Spain and now a date with the Dutch awaits in Wednesday’s semi-final.
