Elliot Anderson had always been aware of his football prowess. The evidence was undeniable—he had been associated with Newcastle United since he was just eight years old.

However, for a time, he shied away from fully embracing this reality. He opted to downplay it during his school years, prioritizing the desire to fit in over gaining attention on the playground.

“While I was playing for Newcastle’s youth teams in school, people often assumed I saw myself as superior or cool,” Anderson explains to Daily Mail Sport. “I didn’t appreciate that perception at all. I didn’t want to be viewed differently just because I played football.”

Now, Anderson has transitioned to Nottingham Forest and has also earned a spot as an England international. National team coach Thomas Tuchel has reportedly praised the 23-year-old, calling him a “gift” and seeing him as the ideal midfield complement to Declan Rice that England has long sought.

As a result, Anderson can no longer remain in the shadows. Despite his reserved demeanor, the young man clad in a black tracksuit, seated at a modest table in Nottingham, still exudes the humility and hesitance of his youth. Initially avoiding much eye contact, Anderson acknowledges the shift in his life with a smile. “It’s hard not to notice,” he admits.

Tuchel and his assistant Anthony Barry only truly became aware of what they had after watching him run the game for England in the final of the Under 21 Euros in Slovakia last summer, as Lee Carsley’s Young Lions retained their title with a 3-2 win over Germany.

‘That was the lightbulb moment,’ says a source close to Tuchel. ‘We suddenly realised he was the answer to our problem.’

Anderson was fast-tracked but only made his senior debut for England against Andorra last September. He has played in every game since.

It has been a rise to prominence so rapid that – barring injuries or catastrophic lack of form – he will be one of the first names on Tuchel’s teamsheet when England kick off their World Cup against Croatia in Dallas in June. Not bad for a player who – when asked – struggles to remember where he actually watched the final of Euro 2024.

So, yes, there is no hiding now. He is the new face of England’s football future.

‘I don’t know about that!’ he says with a laugh. ‘And I don’t want to say there was a problem there. I just came in and tried to fulfil a role. But yeah, it’s gone well. It’s all a bit mad really.

‘There is more recognition. But I am OK with it, I think. I’m still not cool! I train, go home, walk the dogs. I’ve just got a new one so it’s carnage in the house.’

As a kid in Whitley Bay, Anderson played in the back garden with Messi or Rooney – ‘the red England shirt’ – on his back. With two older brothers, it was a familiar story. ‘They basically just kicked the c**p out of me,’ he smiles.

At Wallsend Boys Club – he is now the sixth alumnus to play for England, following Peter Beardsley, Alan Shearer, Michael Carrick, Fraser Forster and Alan Thompson – he was a striker. Former Newcastle scout Graham Carr once described him as a cross between Beardsley and Paul Gascoigne.

Playing in the same team as Gascoigne’s nephew at the age of 12, he was able to pick the great magician’s brain during a car journey to an away game. When he played on loan for Bristol Rovers three seasons ago, meanwhile, it was on the left wing.

‘I was a dribbler who just wanted the ball at his feet,’ he smiles.

So Anderson’s emergence in a deep-lying role that had been a problem position for England since Kalvin Phillips fell of a footballing cliff face after Euro 2020 is not only a bit of a surprise to him but also a bit of an accident.

‘It’s weird because in pre-camp to that Under 21 tournament I was actually supposed to play higher up the pitch as an eight-slash-10,’ Anderson reveals.

‘But we had a game against each other and we just couldn’t get the build-up going. We were really struggling. So Lee (Carsley) told me to drop back into the No 6 role and everything changed.

‘Suddenly we were just playing total soccer in the games. It clicked. I was getting the ball off the centre backs and just playing out, which was something pretty new to me.

‘I hadn’t even done that so much at Forest but I remember in that final feeling it was something that I was managing really well.’

At Newcastle – for whom his grandfather played in the 1960s – they miss Anderson. Manager Eddie Howe was a huge fan of a player sold in July 2024 for £35million so that the club could meet the requirements of the Premier League’s financial rules.

‘Just a great kid,’ says a Newcastle source today. ‘It’s rare when a player leaves that you want him to really succeed at a rival club but that’s how we feel about Elliot. He’s one of ours’.

Anderson’s ties to the North East remain strong. His brother Louis plays non-League football on Tyneside and Elliot has been known to stand on the terraces. His other brother Will earned some notoriety as a contestant on Love Island.

‘When he went in I was a Newcastle player and when he came out I was at Forest,’ laughs Anderson. ‘He just said: “What’s gone on there?”’

He has no regrets about his move and was reassured pretty quickly that he was swapping one big club for another. On the day he signed, he and his father Ian took a tour of the Forest museum. It has two European Cups in it.

‘I used to come down, play on that pitch you can see over there for Newcastle academy teams and my dad used to say it was just a top, historic club,’ he says. ‘And then obviously when I came and they showed me all the stuff the club has achieved, it was really good.

‘I wouldn’t be in an England shirt if I hadn’t moved. A great group of players and staff have helped me get there, showing people what I can do on the pitch because obviously I didn’t manage to do that too much in Newcastle. I’m really thankful.’

After the FA Cup semi-final and European qualification of last season, this one has not been easy. Forest are, remarkably, on their third manager of the campaign, sit in 17th position in the Premier League and are out of the FA Cup.

Asked if it’s been challenging to have such upheaval, he says: ‘Yeah, I think so. But it’s football, isn’t it? You never know what’s going to happen.

‘Obviously the way we ended last year, you’d never expect this. But it has happened. So everyone’s sort of trying to deal with it.

‘I feel like we got a big win against West Ham last time so that helped a lot. There’s a few senior lads within the group who are trying to drive standards every day and get us back to where we should be. I see myself as in that group.

‘I think it’s only us players who can get us out of this.’

There tend to be clear staging posts in every footballer’s career and if that night in Bratislava was one for Anderson then so was a call made by Newcastle’s loan manager Shola Ameobi on the very last day of the January 2022 transfer window. It was Bristol Rovers manager Joey Barton who picked up the phone.

‘I was struggling to get a loan and Joey said he could only do it in the summer,’ Anderson recalls. ‘I was gutted but then he said: “Go on then, we will.”

‘So I go down and they told me they were originally after someone else and that it was going to be really tough for me to get in the team as they were winning. It was fine. That’s exactly why I had stepped out of my comfort level. To try to play in a senior team.

‘Then after training the next day I think they just thought, “Oh, OK… he can actually play”. I came on at half-time of the first game – Sutton away – and basically played every one after that. I never looked back.’

Barton – never one for understatement – labelled his teenage loanee ‘the Geordie Maradona’ and that one has stuck. He also used to call him ‘Billy’ (Elliot).

‘That was about my dribbling and not many people know that one,’ laughs Anderson, who has nothing to say on Barton’s current life as a social media menace but much to reflect on in terms of an influence on a career.

‘I loved working under him,’ he says. ‘He helped me so much when I was there. He was just really nice to me and gave me that platform to go and play.

‘Joey’s message to me was about believing in myself. He played once for England and just used to say to me: “If I have got one cap, then you can get a hundred.” That really lifted me.’ 

At Newcastle, they say Anderson returned from that loan as a different person and player. At the FA, they talk of a player who took some time to integrate himself with confidence but now carries the look of a guy who knows he is there for the long-term.

‘I think that’s just life isn’t it?,’ Anderson asks rhetorically. ‘It’s normal when you get put in a new situation. I mean I was suddenly in front of players who I had been watching on the telly. My idols, really. Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham.

‘I was looking at these players and thinking: “God, I’m actually training and playing with them.” I know it sounds like you are sort of fanboying but it can get you quite shocked to be there. Anyway the gaffer (Tuchel) sat me down on day one and said: “Look, you’re here for a reason and I see a plan with you.”

‘That just makes you more relaxed going into training. And obviously the players around you are that good that they’re making you look better. I have looked up to Jude over the past few years. He’s such a good player and a very good person as well. So, you know. I really enjoy being in the camp.’

In the wake of the Under 21 Euros, Tuchel asked Carsley and FA technical director John McDermott who the ‘good tourists’ had been. Keen to develop the right environment at senior level, Tuchel took note when Anderson’s name formed part of the answer.

In Bratislava, Anderson and Bournemouth’s Alex Scott – who himself now has a senior call-up – ran an informal coffee club in the city centre every day.

‘The senior team does feel similar,’ he says. ‘The atmosphere is the same. It helps. But we know we have to take that on to the pitch and perform.’

With that in mind, Anderson will face up to his England midfield partner Rice when Arsenal visit the City Ground on Saturday evening.

The relationship is still forming and Anderson reveals they have not been in touch since the last England camp in November. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been watching.

‘I want to watch his games,’ Anderson says. ‘To see how he’s playing and how he likes to play and stuff. I don’t keep in touch with him. I am still new to the team.

‘But Declan has helped me massively in helping me to understand the role we both have.

‘He’s definitely more of the forward-thinking one. He’s the eight and I am the six. I Iike the way he controls the midfield and dictates the play. Every time we play it’s building the relationship.’

For England to do well this summer, that relationship will have to work. Tuchel’s team cannot win the World Cup without the ball.

In the entrance to England’s St George’s Park base, the Under 21s’ European trophy sits behind glass. Anderson walks past it every time he reports for international duty.

‘I have thought about the summer and it’s a bit of a dream,’ he says. ‘I see that trophy and it just makes me fancy another one.’