Phil Jagielka interview: 'Roy Hodgson could have easily just caved in', says the Everton defender

It has been a process of change so low-key that even Phil Jagielka is taken by surprise when it is pointed out to him that he and Gary Cahill have started the last seven England internationals in the middle of defence. But it as good as official: the Everton captain is one half of the new central defence that Roy Hodgson will take to the World Cup finals in June.

At 31, Jagielka says, when we meet at a Manchester hotel, that he would not change his career progression for any other and when you see where it has taken him, that point is hard to argue with. He joined Everton a month before his 25th birthday in 2007, having played just one season in the Premier League with Sheffield United, and steadily he has got better and better.

Confident and with strong opinions on the game, he is one of the personalities in Hodgson’s squad as well as Roberto Martinez’s chosen leader for his club. He jokes that having been given the armband by David Moyes when Phil Neville announced he was to leave in the summer, he then had to wait to see if Martinez would keep him in the job. “I could have had the shortest stint ever!”

Jagielka and seventh-placed Everton face Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park this afternoon where the captain will be resplendent in a pair of pink adidas Predators. That aside there is much that is reassuringly old school about the south Manchester boy. He was called into Hodgson’s Euro 2012 squad late on and never played a minute but come the friendlies against Chile on Friday and then Germany a week on Tuesday he is a key player.

He hopes, with all the usual caveats, to be in Brazil next summer “with a low squad number and ready to play”. He is already very proud, understandably, of his role in qualification, in which he was one of the highest appearance makers, a starter in seven of the 10 games. For him and Cahill there was arguably no more satisfying performance than the shut-out in Kiev in September that set England up to win their final two home games and top Group H.

It was the game that provoked the most controversy of the whole campaign, not least because of Gary Lineker’s critical tweets and the despair at England starting the game by passing the ball back to Jagielka, who launched it forward. As a man who steers clear of newspapers and radio phone-ins around big games – and is not on Twitter – Jagielka can laugh at the fact that the debate largely passed him by.

“I’m a big boy – they can criticise if they want to! The fact of the matter was that we knew they [Ukraine] were going to come straight at us. We were trying to make a statement: ‘OK, if you want to chase the ball for the first five or 10 minutes we are not going to give you the opportunity to nick it off us and get a shot off at Joe [Hart]’.

“I think there was one little scare where the ball went out for a corner where the lad got in behind the defence and in front of Joe and other than that there wasn’t too many other chances. People are going to disagree with tactics and selections.

“If we had lost the game it would have been different. If I had shelled it forward, they’d headed it back, gone through and scored then it would have been the worst thing to do. As it was we kept a clean sheet and got the two wins. We can take the positives from the last two games.

“As for Gary Lineker, he has been a fantastic footballer; you only need to look at his goalscoring record. But the game has changed since he played. The nations that were the powerhouses, some of them are still the powerhouses, some of them are nowhere near. Other nations have come up from nowhere to become footballing nations.

“It’s difficult. But football is a game of opinions. I am not going to take anything personally by what he says. He now has another job which relies on him having an opinion and the opinion was that he didn’t think it was particularly exciting the way we played in Ukraine. But if we had not qualified or we had been in the play-offs next week his point would have been more valid.”

Jagielka’s respect for Hodgson, who has capped him more than any other England manager, is striking. He says that the atmosphere in the England camp – “such a good vibe, where no one feels that they can’t walk into a room and be part of the group” – is directly down to the attitude of Hodgson and his staff.

“He’s an easy person to play for and a great coach – and it is proven he did make the right decisions because we qualified. It would have been easy to cave in over a few tweets, a few things written about him, but as it was he put on his bullet-proof vest, so to speak, and his wings of steel. He stuck to what he thought was going to get us qualified and you have to take your hat off to him and say it worked.”

At Everton under Martinez there has been a process of adapting to what Jagielka says has been wholesale change in terms of the style of play, training drills, even the timing of training sessions. But given that transition, the returns have still been impressive.

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“We will make these mistakes that we would never have made in the past because of the situation we are putting ourselves in,” he says. “But to the same extent we have probably created more opportunities through being a bit more expansive. As a defender under David Moyes we were happy... we’d always fancy keeping a clean sheet first and foremost, whereas [this season] we have probably surrendered a clean sheet to attack teams.”

Which brings us to the now departed manager who brought Jagielka to Everton. How has it been watching Moyes get to grips with the biggest job in English football at Manchester United? “It’s difficult because it was always going to be the hardest job in the world to go there. Some of the bigger names are getting towards the end of their careers.

“He has a young squad and who do you pick? It’s a little bit different to Everton, where we probably had 15, 16 first-team players and everyone else was a young lad who could play every so often. He has probably got 25 and most of them have a value of at least £10m-plus.

“That was always going to be the hard part, to find his squad and find his feet. The fixture list was horrific for him – so, so bad. That puts extra pressure in the games that you expect Man U to win and they have come unstuck at times.

“But he’s a great manager and as much as Man U won the league and everyone expects it is easy to take them to the next level, it is a little bit of a rebuilding situation. So I am sure they will stick with him and if they do so he will be in the job for a long, long time.

“There is a tremendous amount of pressure when you take over what was the No 1 team in England. I am sure he has had a few sleepless nights but he will have enough confidence in his own ability. Once things do start clicking, probably they’ll be flying back up the league.”

Jagielka is contracted to Everton until 2017 and he is, by his own admission, not someone to “chase a move”. Nevertheless, he desperately wants a crack at playing in a final, and Champions League football, and he is confident he can do it. “I don’t see that being an unrealistic ambition at Everton.” When you look at his progress in the last few years, it is hard to argue.

Phil Jagielka is wearing the new Predator football boots, part of the adidas Samba Collection inspired by Brazil. Visit www.adidas.com or join the conversation @adidasUK #Predatorlz #allinornothing

My Other Life

I wouldn’t mind being a caddie for my son or daughter. My boy Zac is only six and he swings it and grips it. My little girl Mya plays golf and a bit of hockey. I think it would be a bit harsh on the family if I tried to make it on the PGA tour and was away all the time! After football I’m hoping to spend as much time running around after them and sharing their highs and lows.