“From the outside, it seems crazy,†Jarell Quansah says, as he reflects on his summer just gone, when dizzying change felt like a constant. “But it is one of them … football is a crazy game.â€
A quick recap. Days after winning the European Under-21 Championship with England at the end of June, Quansah decided to leave Liverpool, his boyhood club, to go to Bayer Leverkusen in a £30m deal.
The big fee equalled big pressure as the 22-year-old was charged with finding his feet in a new country and at a club where the churn was dramatic. Erik ten Hag had stepped in to replace Xabi Alonso as the manager and a host of key players were gone or going – chief among them Florian Wirtz, Piero Hincapié, Jeremie Frimpong, Amine Adli, Granit Xhaka, Lukas Hradecky and Jonathan Tah.
Quansahâ€s Bundesliga debut came on 23 August at home to Hoffenheim and the centre-half scored after five minutes, albeit the goal was undercut by sadness. All he could think about was Diogo Jota, his former Liverpool teammate, who was killed in a car accident. Quansah performed Jotaâ€s gamer celebration as a mark of respect.
“To have a goal on your Bundesliga debut, at home, after five minutes, is certainly a whirlwind,†Quansah says. “But my overwhelming feeling was that it was a tribute to Diogo.â€
The defender could have been forgiven for wondering what he had signed up to at Leverkusen. From the promising start in their opening league fixture, they fell to a 2-1 defeat and the next match on 30 August was just as bad. Ten Hagâ€s team threw away 2-0 and 3-1 leads to draw 3-3 at 10-man Werder Bremen, the equaliser coming in stoppage time. It was not Ten Hagâ€s team for much longer. He was sacked on 1 September.
Quansah does not come across as the type to fret. If composure defines his game, it was on show during the interview he gave after joining England for the Wembley friendly against Wales on Thursday and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia in Riga next Tuesday.
Quansah has kept his head down under the new Leverkusen manager, Kasper Hjulmand, and continued to do what he always intended to do at the club – play. Hjulmand has brought stability. His team have three wins and one draw in four league matches along with draws in each of their Champions League ties. But there is a broader statistic that encourages Quansah, even bringing a measure of vindication. It is the one which shows he has played every minute of the clubâ€s campaign.
It is one that Thomas Tuchel has noted. The England head coach was a fan last season, selecting Quansah when he named his first squad in March. After leaving him out in June so that Quansah could concentrate on the Under-21 European Championship, he gave him a late call-up in September when John Stones was forced to withdraw.
Jarell Quansah and Harvey Elliott embrace at the end of the European Under-21 Championship final against Germany. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP
Still to win his first cap, Quansah must have done something right in training and around the camp because he was named at the outset in Tuchelâ€s 24‑man group for Wales and Latvia, essentially as a fifth centre-back with Stones fit again. The dream is a debut. It is another thing he would surely take in his stride.
“At Leverkusen, the club were interested in me for a while and thatâ€s not just from the manager [Ten Hag],†Quansah says. “They were interested before he got appointed. So knowing it was a sort of internal decision and nothing would change with which manager was to come in and stuff like that … it was easy for me to make that decision [to join them].
“We had a lot of players leaving and itâ€s always tough when you lose key players. It has been tough to build the leadership groups but the results we have had [under Hjulmand] show that we have got a good squad with quality players. It is going to take time to build and we are not where we want to be. But if we are getting results and not losing that is a good place to start.â€
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It had to have been a wrench for Quansah to leave Liverpool, his club from the age of five, where he enjoyed so many memorable moments – such as the Carabao Cup final victory over Chelsea in 2023‑24 when he came on as an extra-time substitute.
Quansah was also a part of last seasonâ€s Premier League title triumph. Yet his view of much of that was not the one he would have chosen. He was an unused substitute on 25 occasions in the competition, his four starts and nine appearances off the bench comparing unfavourably with his numbers in the league from 2023‑24 when he started nine games and came on in four.
“Iâ€ve always learned off some of the best players around me at Liverpool and itâ€s been so good for my career,†he says. “But as a young centre-back, you need games and Iâ€m going to be needing hundreds of games to be where I want to be.
“I just wanted game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, itâ€s not promised because there are world-class players all over the pitch. I wanted somewhere where they can trust that I might make mistakes at times but they will look under that and see I can keep pushing and pushing.â€
Quansah remembers his loan to League One Bristol Rovers in the second-half of 2022-23 where he made his first senior appearances – 16 of them, to be precise. There were “numerous wake-up callsâ€, he says with a smile, beginning with his debut; a 5-1 defeat at Morecambe.
“That was a true eye-opener,†Quansah says. “It was a really valuable part of my career because I wanted to make the next step to playing first-team football. Every game I learned something new. Thatâ€s where I knew how valuable experience and playing games was. You could say it informed my decision in the summer.â€
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