Lewis Dunk called up to England squad
Lewis Dunk has become the first Brighton and Hove Albion player to be called up by England for 36 years.
The Seagulls’ vice captain has been named in Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions squad for the UEFA Nations League games away against Croatia and Spain just 48 hours after signing a new five-year deal with the club.
Dunk is a replacement for Burnley defender James Tarkowski who has withdrawn with injury. The last Albion player to represent England was Steve Foster at the 1982 World Cup in Spain.
Should Dunk play a part in either game, he will become just the fourth Brighton player to play for England after Foster, Peter Ward and Tommy Cook. He will also be just the second after Cook to have done so after coming through the Brighton youth system, if you can call what they had the 1910’s a youth system.
The timing of Dunk’s call up is interesting, given that he’s been quite average this season. He appeared to have been rushed back from an injury sustained in the opening stages of the 3-2 win over Manchester United and hadn’t looked entirely comfortable or up to speed until Friday nights victory against West Ham United.
He certainly hasn’t hit the heights of last season so far, when he was outstanding yet couldn’t break into the national team despite being widely tipped for a place by plenty of pundits. This call up then is belated reward for his excellence in the 2017-18 season.
It will be an interesting experience for Dunk, should he be given game time. He has only played as part of a back three on two previous occasions. One of those was last season when Chelsea won 4-0 at the Amex. The other was under Gus Poyet in the 2012-13 season against Millwall at home. Poyet very quickly abandoned the experiment with the Albion 1-0 down and Dunk was the man hauled after 39 minutes in order to revert back to a four man defence.
If he plays in Thursday night’s game away in Croatia, he will also be playing in an empty stadium. The Croatian FA are facing a stadium ban after somebody mowed a swastika into their pitch in 2015, as you do. Dunk should cope well with an empty stadium as the atmosphere shouldn’t be too different from playing at Withdean.
Dunk has been previously called up at Under 21 level after his fine start to the 2011-12 season, but was an unused substitute in a 5-0 win over Iceland in November 2011 for Stuart Pearce’s side.
That came less than two years after his Albion debut in a 0-0 draw away at McDons in the penultimate game of the 2009-10 season.
Dunk was largely a back up defender for the next four seasons behind Gordon Greer, Adam El-Abd, Tommy Elphick and then Matt Upson.
He nailed down a regular first team spot for the first time under Sami Hyypia in 2014-15 and has been a first choice since Chris Hughton’s arrival at the start of 2015, save for a short spell at the start of the 2015-16 season when he tried to force through a move to Fulham.
Should Dunk impress – and there’s no reason to think he won’t – then he could give himself a real shot of being involved right the way through to Euro 2020.
With no real quality young centre backs coming through, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Dunk could be on the Wembley pitch come July 12th 2020 with the Henri Delauney trophy in his hands.
