IT WAS difficult to believe that England’s game against Greece on Thursday night was Curtis Jones’s senior debut for the national team.

The 23-year-old Liverpudlian carried himself like a seasoned international and rounded off a familiar hard-working, team-focused display with a moment of individual class to add England’s third goal with an inventive flick.

Seeing Jones in an England shirt is already reasonably familiar. He was a regular in the youth teams and was part of the team that won the U21 European Championship in 2023. 

He even got his name on the scoresheet for the only goal in the final against Spain after deflecting a Cole Palmer free-kick goalward.

It was a slightly fortunate goal, but there was nothing fortunate about Jones’s success at that level. 

He’d been involved with a talented England U21 side throughout qualifying and played a key role in helping the team carry out their game plan on and off the ball.

It’s a similar role to the one he’s been performing sporadically at Liverpool for several seasons now, and just as his first senior England cap arrived this year, his importance for Liverpool has felt like it has increased in recent weeks and months under new manager Arne Slot.

Jones grew up in the Toxteth area of Liverpool in the heart of the city. His emergence at the club at which he has played since he was nine took him from the Kirkby academy to the old Melwood first-team training ground and coincided with the presence of a number of key figures at the club across these bases.

The most prominent and most obvious is Jurgen Klopp. The influence of the German coach who revived Liverpool into a global football force shows in Jones’s application on the pitch, from his intelligent out-of-possession pressing to his ability to work for the team in possession.

Klopp also helped Jones become more resilient, turning a gifted academy footballer into one who can be relied upon at first team level.

Jones can still produce in individual moments, as he did throughout his time at the club’s youth teams and as seen with the goal against Greece, but under Klopp, he developed the tools necessary to convert this into something effective at the top level.

Some of that on-ball possession and positional work comes from working with Pep Lijnders, who initially served as a coach tasked with creating a pathway from the academy to the first team at Liverpool, before later becoming an assistant coach to Klopp.

As a local player who came through Liverpool’s academy and became one of the best players in the world, Steven Gerrard has always been an inspiration for the club’s youth players.

Jones not only had that inspiration to draw upon but also had the practical experience of learning from Gerrard who made his first steps into coaching at Liverpool’s academy while Jones was still at that level.

Though Jones will have learned plenty from Gerrard when it comes to the football side of the game, the Liverpool legend’s tutelage was also focused on the mental side—on what is required to make the step up from youth to senior football and play for your hometown club.

Both Gerrard and Klopp saw part of their task with Jones as harnessing his talent and making sure the player learned to use it effectively in game situations at the highest level. They were critical of Jones when they felt it was needed, but it’s safe to say their approach worked.

“I feel like Steven was the one who came in and made me really think, ‘if I lock all the way in now, I can go to the top,’” Jones said in 2023 when looking back at his time working under Gerrard.

On February 5 2020, at the age of 19 years and five days, Jones became the youngest player to ever captain Liverpool. He has since gone on to captain the team on other occasions and certainly has the ability and mentality to perform this role on a full-time basis in the future.

The coaching received throughout his time at Liverpool’s youth teams (with Gerrard and several others) before going on to work with one of the best coaches the game has ever seen in Klopp, was a perfect combination.

It now feels like Jones is flourishing even further under Slot, using the groundwork put in throughout the years and turning it into something vital for the first team, knitting together the plans of the new manager with his individual skill and that of his teammates.

He suits Slot’s style of play, which retains some of Klopp’s high pressing but is slightly more considered in possession.

Jones regularly finishes games as Liverpool’s most accurate passer and the most secure in possession and also ended his England debut with 96 per cent pass success.

On top of the technical ability and the work rate, Jones is also very versatile. Klopp once suggested that he could probably play any position on the pitch, and this is something he’s almost managed already as he’s played every position for Liverpool apart from centre-back, left-back, and goalkeeper.

Under Slot, he has already been asked to play as an attacking midfielder alongside the centre-forward and as the deepest midfielder in front of the back four, emerging in October and November as an increasingly key part of the team.

When Slot rotates Jones out of the team, they miss him. He’s bringing some of the kind of football Georginio Wijnaldum brought to Liverpool in that successful Klopp side, linking the various parts of the team together and covering for others when needed. If anything, Jones feels even more involved in games than Wijnaldum was.

Jones and fellow Scouser Trent Alexander-Arnold are now the inspiration to players in Liverpool’s youth academy that Gerrard once was for them.

Alexander-Arnold, whose current Liverpool contract expires at the end of this season, has been linked with some of the biggest clubs in Europe and in particular with a move to Real Madrid to link up with compatriot Jude Bellingham.

After Jones scored on his England debut on Thursday, the main image doing the rounds was one of him shaking hands in a ceremonial celebration with Bellingham, which might give Real Madrid even more ideas.

Jones emerges for England as part of a talented and exciting group of players. It’s one that made it deep in tournaments under Gareth Southgate but never looked entirely convincing when it came to winning the big games.

Surrounded by attacking talent, Jones could be England’s facilitator under Southgate’s replacement, Thomas Tuchel — another German manager from whom Jones will learn a lot and who, to some degree, combines the tactical ideas of Lijnders, Klopp, and Slot.

A Bellingham and Jones midfield partnership could emerge, but Liverpool will be hoping it’s limited to international football and not at Real Madrid (unless they can work out a way to bring Bellingham to Anfield as was attempted before he chose Real).

Even as he’s about to turn 24, when some young players reach the level at which they remain for their peak years, Jones continues to improve. His England senior call coming later than expected might also help in this regard, as will working with Tuchel.

At Liverpool, there is regularly a clamour calling for the club to spend big on midfielders, but in Jones, they have an all-round player who is priceless and could well become a club captain as well as a key player.