Jarrad Branthwaite might make his senior England debut against Brazil on Saturday, up against stars like Vinicius Jr and Endrick, and it is from this point that his remarkable career trajectory must now be measured. Last summer he was on the bench for England’s Under-21s watching others play ahead of him; go back another four years and Branthwaite was ready to give up football entirely. He was a 15-year-old playing for his local club, Carlisle United, about to lose his academy contract after struggling with tendinitis for 18 months. Carlisle offered one final four-week trial to let him win back his place. It was his parents who encouraged their teenage son to give football one last try, with an arm round the shoulder and a kick up the backside.
“If it wasn’t for my mam and dad, I probably wouldn’t have carried on. In my mind I was thinking, ‘if they don’t want me now, what’s four weeks gonna do?’. But my dad gave me a training programme, and I stuck to that, and it helped me get a scholarship.” Branthwaite has no idea what he would have done without football, and laughs at the idea that a burly northern lad might have instead joined the military. “I don’t think so,” he smiles. “All I wanted to do when I was young was football, football, football, and that happened. I didn’t know where to be, and then that’s where my dad stepped in and basically said, come on…” He is sitting in a quiet room at St George’s Park, discussing his path from Cumbria to Wembley. Often footballers are different in the flesh from the character you see on the field, but Branthwaite is exuding all the same traits that make him an exceptional young defender: composure, a calm self-assurance, with that imposing physical presence. Everything has happened at lightning speed. Carlisle kept him on and within three months he was playing in the first team, aged 16, under manager Steven Pressley, who Branthwait still talks to today. “I wasn’t as tall, and I was skinny as well,” he remembers. “When you come up against League Two strikers who are tall and strong it’s difficult, but that’s where you learn. The manager believed in me.”
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