England’s Lewis Dunk ‘a completely different player’ as he eyes Euro 2024 spot

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Lewis Dunk says he returns to the England fold five years after his first and only cap a “completely different player” after being taught to see the game through different eyes. The Brighton defender, 31, feared his chance for a recall had gone especially when injury cruelly denied him a second call-up in May last year.

But after being forced to re-evaluate the way he plays the game under revolutionary Seagulls boss Roberto Di Zerbi, he insists he will return a completely different player. And this time he is hoping to keep hold of his spot all the way to the Euros next summer.

“I’m completely different person and a different player. I’m five years older, five years wiser and I’ve learnt a lot football-wise and life-wise in those five years,” said Dunk. “I’m a different person now and come here with a different confidence that I probably didn’t come with before.”

Key to that confidence has been the remarkable journey travelled with Brighton, first under Chris Hughton, then Graham Potter and now Di Zerbi, who Dunk says challenged everything he felt he knew about the game. While much appears the same nearly five years on – the 6ft 4ins frame still commanding attention as he walks into a room – Dunk v2.0 is much changed since featuring in the 3-0 victory over USA in November 2018.

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“It comes with the way Brighton’s gone and the way I’ve dedicated myself to learning from this new manager and to improve,” he said. “I’m 31 but still learning every day and feel good in myself and want to play at the highest level and now I’m doing that – I’m playing in Europe and I’m in the England set-up.”

Dunk’s travels with Brighton from a debut against MK Dons in League One in May 2010 to leading them into Europe have been the stuff of dreams. And given how much he has achieved in the last 12 months his name is firmly in the frame for Gareth Southgate’s plans for the Euros next summer.

He added: “It was a long wait – five or six years of not being in the squad and you starting thinking ‘is it time that I won’t get back in again?’ 

“But all I did was focus on my playing for my club and trying to be the best I can be for them, and then hopefully the form shows in the end and I’m here now.”

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Asked what Di Zerbi has done for his game, Dunk is visibly enthused. “Football-wise I now see the game since the new manager at Brighton has come in a completely different way,” he said. “All our games now are about pressure, playing with opposition teams when they’re pressing high and pressing low. When to pass, the timing of that and the timing of movement. 

“Before, I didn’t really know about that. Football is not what I thought it was. The idea of what I did before, I thought it made sense. But when you learn something completely different, you believe in it and this makes sense.” That Brighton’s strategies have changed people’s perceptions of Dunk from a Row Z finder to refined passer is clear from Southgate’s renewed interest.

But the defender know it is now time to show a bigger audience. He concluded: “You have to look at yourself and try to improve yourself every day like I do, and keep working hard and now I’ve earned a way back in. So it’s been a great, great journey, an enjoyable one and it’s not ending anytime soon.”

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