Before 15 December last year, Spence had played just 64 minutes of Premier League football in the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n
After that date, he completed 90 minutes in 19 of Spurs’ subsequent 22 league games.<\/p>\n
The transformation was stark. Spence was so far down then Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou’s pecking order he was not even included in the squad for the Europa League group stage.<\/p>\n
He only came in for the knockout stage but played 180 minutes of the last-16 win against AZ Alkmaar.<\/p>\n
He was then introduced as a substitute as Spurs beat Manchester United in the final for their first major trophy in 17 years, qualifying for the Champions League in the process.<\/p>\n
Such was his progress last season, there was talk of Spence featuring in Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad last March.<\/p>\n
Spence missed out, with Arsenal teenager Myles Lewis-Skelly called up as the new left-back face instead, despite the Spurs man making more Premier League tackles, interceptions, clearances, blocks and defensive headers at that point in the campaign.<\/p>\n
But Spence stayed in the picture, and after playing every minute for Spurs in the new Premier League season to date he has got his call-up to the senior squad.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely a big deal to play for England, 100%,” Spence said.<\/p>\n
“The manager has made me feel comfortable, everyone here has made me comfortable. Also I’ve played at under-21s, so I know a bit more. But senior level, I haven’t done it before. The boys have made me feel welcome and taken me in.”<\/p>\n
He was given his England Under-21 debut by Lee Carsley in March 2022 against Albania.<\/p>\n
Carsley wanted to take Spence to the European Under-21 Championship in 2023, where England triumphed by beating Spain in the final, but injury ruled the defender out of the tournament.<\/p>\n
To Carsley, Spence’s rise to prominence is no surprise.<\/p>\n
“I love Djed. I think he’s such a good player,” Carsley told BBC Sport earlier this year. “So exciting, so attacking, athletic, a quiet guy but humble.<\/p>\n
“He’s got so many attributes, the way he can drive and dribble with the ball, score, create, defend. He’s a player that there’s no ceiling where he could go.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before 15 December last year, Spence had played just 64 minutes of Premier League football in the 2024-25…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-396384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115144269832775046","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}