Lewis Hall is in brilliant form for England and Newcastle United.
The lifelong Newcastle United fan has now become clearly the best left-back that England have.
A huge game away to Spain tonight and Lewis Hall expected to be in the starting line-up having been the best player on the pitch when England beat Croatia 2-1 in midweek.
His career direction though could have been very different.
Lewis Hall began as a kid with Chelsea, where he came through the academy ranks playing in both midfield and defence as well, as he did with the England development teams.
He is such a talent with supreme confidence on the ball, you could imagine him having the ability to play anywhere on the pitch.
Left-back it was to be though and it was Thomas Tuchel who actually gave Lewis Hall his first taste of first team football when they were both at Chelsea.
Lewis Hall telling the official England media: “A lot of my game has been developed at left-back but I think I could play in midfield if I needed to…but as a career, I feel I have more ability at left-back just with the way we play at Newcastle United as it really suits my game with full-backs being involved. I feel I get loads of the ball in good areas and last season I worked on the defensive side of my game which is really important to me now. I like to get forward as well so when I’m getting the ball regularly, building from the back and getting the ball into the final third, I like to do that as well and create chances.”
Lewis Hall also talking about Ashley Cole, who he has worked with at both Chelsea and England: “He helped me a lot when I played towards the end of my spell at Chelsea. He gave me a lot of advice and he tries to help me out now. Especially with how good of a player he was, and in my position, he’s someone who I know that any advice he gives me is something I can take and look to use. There’s a lot of things he did with me with regards details to positioning, but everyone’s different. He said to me that he could give me tips on how he would defend certain situations but there might be other situations where I would defend differently because of the profile of player that I am compared to him. But something he’s always told me is to be myself and trust my ability, and any advice I get along the way to just take it and use it.”
Lewis Hall also talking about his first experience of working under Thomas Tuchel at Chelsea, the now England boss handed him a first team debut in an FA Cup match in January 2022 when Hall became Chelsea’s youngest ever player in the competition: “I was 17 at Chelsea when I first trained with the first team and I just remember him and his staff being really welcoming to me…I think they realised what a big thing it was for a young player, because there was a couple of us who came up at the time. I remember his sessions were really good, a lot was possession-based which I really enjoyed and he was a good person to me and gave me my debut. Without that, it probably wouldn’t have given me the confidence to kick-on from there, so I’m grateful for that but right now I want to focus on here. I’m a completely different player now, so I’m not sure if that means anything now.”