Wembley has been described many times by many different people but Tottenham’s Eric Dier appears to be striving for some sort of award for terse minimalism. “It’s grass and four lines,” the England midfielder says. “I really don’t think it makes too much of a difference.”
As a Spurs player Dier has his own reasons for looking at the national stadium that way, suggestions of a Wembley hoodoo having yet to be dispelled after two Premier League games, though he is back at the grass and four lines with England and looking forward to it. “I’m in the lucky situation where I get to play at Wembley every other week, and I’ve got to say I enjoy it,” Dier says. “Maybe opponents feel the same way, but people just want to jump on the Wembley thing with Spurs, last season in particular. If you get down to it and look at our performances in the Champions League last season we weren’t in a good period as a team .
“This season when we started out with Chelsea, we played extremely well for the whole game. We lost, but our performance was very good. Last time out against Burnley we didn’t kill the game off, so we drew. That was disappointing, but it could happen anywhere. It is true that Wembley is a bigger pitch than you usually come across – more grass and longer lines – but we have adjusted our training pitches at Spurs to the same dimensions so you can’t find any excuses there. We’re pretty fit as a team so we’ll be OK.”
Now Wayne Rooney has retired, Dier finds himself among the more established members of the England set-up, along with Harry Kane and Dele Alli, something he would have found hard to imagine a couple of years ago. “The thing I remember most about joining up with England as a new young player was how brilliant Wayne was at making us feel welcome,” he says.
“You never really imagine when you come away with England that Wayne Rooney will be looking out for you, but that’s the way it was. That’s the kind of thing most people don’t get to see so much and Wayne will be missed in that sense as well as on the pitch.
“I’m sad to see him go because he’s been fantastic and it feels like the end of an era, but there aren’t many of his generation left any more.
“England is in a bit of a transition stage with lots of new faces and young players coming through. It’s very hard to say where we are at the moment, you only really find out how good you are when you make it to a tournament. Hopefully, we are on the right track.”
England face one of the stiffer challenges of a relatively undemanding qualification group against Slovakia on Monday, and should they make it to the World Cup in Russia next summer it is likely a core of Tottenham players will continue to be involved.
“We all have to keep working hard and improving to warrant our place in the squad,” Dier says. “It’s good to have familiar faces around you, but I don’t think there is a clique situation or even a club atmosphere around England.
“There were 15 different clubs represented when this squad was announced, there are players from all over the Premier League in the group and I would say it is probably the most diverse squad I have been in. I can’t see any kind of club culture here and for cliques to develop it usually takes a squad to be dominated by three or four clubs with their people sticking together. England is not like that at present, everyone just gets on really well so I don’t think there’s any problem.”
As an established international – he can hardly be described as a senior at the age of 23 – Dier accepts he is seen as a role model but understands the pressures and pitfalls that surround modern players. “I could talk about this issue all day, it’s so complex,” he says. “It is important that we footballers try to carry ourselves in the right way because there are millions of kids looking up to us. Every player takes that seriously, and rightly so, but what people also need to realise is that at the end of the day we are just young boys.
“If you were to follow any 21- or 22-year-old around for six months I’m sure you would see some bad stuff. In football at 25 you are seen as being in the middle of your career, but from a life point of view you are still a young boy who is going to make mistakes. People need to remember that sometimes.
“I read something that Jamie Carragher wrote, saying that gifted footballers are not necessarily as lucky in all the other aspects of their lives. We are just normal human beings with a gift in a particular area, which makes us extremely lucky in one sense but brings with it fame, wealth and attention that many young kids find hard to handle.”
Dier’s point seemed to be perfectly made when Ousmane Dembélé joined Barcelona from Borussia Dortmund for a fee rising to £135m, the 20-year-old French player expressing a degree of surprise that such a move could come about after two years as a professional footballer.
“It’s where the industry is,” Dier says. “I’m not saying I agree with it, but it’s not Dembélé’s fault that he’s good at football and someone is willing to pay that sort of price. Footballers have no say in what sort of money changes hands, that has more to do with people way up the food chain.”