Phil Jones was one of only five players picked to represent England at both the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, but when Gareth Southgate sits down to select his squad for Qatar 2022, he won’t be anywhere near the conversation.
The 30-year-old defender can’t play for Manchester United in the Premier League at the moment, either, having been left out of the registered squad. He could be added in January but that would require him to prove his fitness first and he hasn’t started back-to-back league games since May 2019.
Out of the contract at Old Trafford in the summer, it’s possible that Jones has played his last game for the club he joined as a teenager in 2011. United hold an option to extend his deal by another 12 months, but after more than two years of injuries and setbacks that Jones has described privately as “hell,” it’s likely that a player once hailed by such managers as Sir Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello and Southgate will be allowed to quietly leave.
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Back in 2011, Ferguson was so keen to sign Jones from Blackburn Rovers that he flew him out to join a family holiday in the south of France. The sales pitch worked and, despite competition from Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, United agreed a deal worth more than £16 million.
Jones had first caught Ferguson’s attention 18 months earlier when Blackburn beat United’s under-18s — a team which included a young Paul Pogba — in the fifth round of the FA Youth Cup. However, Ferguson was convinced about the transfer while he watched Jones play for Blackburn’s first team during a 7-1 defeat at Old Trafford.
It’s a day Jones, even now, says he prefers to forget but Ferguson watched the 18-year-old scream and shout at teammates more than 10 years his senior. One of them was Michael Salgado, a veteran defender who had played more than 300 games for Real Madrid and twice won the Champions League. If Jones was confident enough to berate Salgado, Ferguson decided, he would be fine walking into a United dressing which boasted the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney. He was right.
Jones played 41 games in his first season and the following year was part of the team which won the Premier League title. By late 2013 he was considered so important that an injury to his ankle dominated the build-up to the Champions League round of 16 tie with Real Madrid. Fantastic during a 1-1 draw at the Bernabeu, he was ruled out of the return leg in Manchester — most remembered for Nani‘s controversial red card for a high challenge — and United went out in a 2-1 defeat.
