Dominic Calvert-Lewin has been discussing dealing with doubt and expectation when he neatly sums up the life of a striker and the unrelenting scrutiny that comes as an accompaniment.Talk has turned from the extra aggression that he has injected into his displays for Everton and on to the improvement
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Dominic Calvert-Lewin: I want to be up with Harry Kane and Sergio Agüero – I can set world alight
Dominic Calvert-Lewin has won the faith of his manager at Everton and is discovering his physical potential, but the young forward tells Paul Joyce there will always be those who doubt
Paul Joyce, Northern Football Correspondent
April 19 2019, 6:00pm, The Times
Calvert-Lewin has earned the trust of Silva, the Everton manager, this season
Dominic Calvert-Lewin has been discussing dealing with doubt and expectation when he neatly sums up the life of a striker and the unrelenting scrutiny that comes as an accompaniment.
Talk has turned from the extra aggression that he has injected into his displays for Everton and on to the improvement in his performances after time spent with Marco Silva, his manager, on the training pitch — yet the clamour for more has not been quelled by his obvious development.
“At the moment, a lot of people are saying, ‘He doesn’t score enough goals’ or ‘Can he add goals to his game?’ but, for me, I have come a long way from when I first came into the side,” he says. “Back then people were saying, ‘Well, he can’t hold the ball up and he can’t do this.’
“I am doing those things now, so there is always going to be something. If I get to 15 goals people will want 20 and then they will want 25. I just see it as another challenge in my career.”
It is a burden with which Calvert-Lewin seems at ease. Sunday’s game at home to Manchester United should mark his 90th appearance for Everton, which is a significant number given that he made his debut in December 2016, aged 19, after a £1.5 million move from Sheffield United, and has had to develop in the spotlight of the Premier League.
Calvert-Lewin, who is now 22, scored the only goal when England Under-20 beat Venezuela to win the World Cup in 2017.
At times, it has felt that the forward has been overexposed at Everton. The sales of leading scorers Romelu Lukaku and Wayne Rooney in successive summers, coupled with Everton’s failure to replace them, opened a pathway for Calvert-Lewin, but also brought pressure.
Leading the line for a club lacking stability on and off the pitch must have felt like an ordeal, especially on those days when a heavy defeat and a cantankerous crowd made for a brutal combination? Calvert-Lewin shakes his head in disagreement.
Calvert-Lewin has scored only eight goals this season but is happy with the way his game is developing
“What a position to be in,” he says. “I never ever felt sorry for myself. All I want to be is the No 9 leading the line, and for me to be in that position maybe a little earlier than I should have been — I was just revelling in that opportunity. The way I saw it was the more I got exposed, the more experience I got and the better I was going to get.
“You go through different stages of transition. You have to earn the respect of your team-mates and win the fans over, and your manager. There are certain stepping stones and it has taken a while for me to get there but I have been listening and learning the whole time. I think now I have kind of pieced all of my experiences together and things are falling into place.”
The point about commanding the trust of those he works with — and for — is key. Silva had offered Calvert-Lewin a launchpad at the start of the season — he started four times in September — and then withdrew it. Between October and January he started sparingly, but he has become one of Silva’s go-to forwards, starting Everton’s past seven games.
He has turned in some swashbuckling displays to justify that faith, swatting Chelsea defenders aside in the 2-0 victory at Goodison Park, and then harassing Arsenal’s rearguard in a 1-0 win.
Calvert-Lewin says that there has been no eureka moment, crediting instead Duncan Ferguson, the first-team coach, and David Unsworth, the under-23 manager, for helping him to channel his potential — and offering an insight into Silva’s methods.
“It has not been so much learning to be aggressive, but learning what my body is capable of,” he says. “And learning that I can bully people and move people around. This season I am starting to realise my physical capabilities.
“My concentration levels have definitely had to increase in a game and in certain other scenarios. So, for example, taking more of a lead on set pieces and being more vocal, growing into the role and accepting more responsibility.
“The manager has done a lot of out of possession work with me in training. He has helped me with my positional play and the finer details which has made the game a lot easier for me.
“I have always covered ground in games, but it is about how I can be more efficient and get in better goalscoring positions.”
Calvert-Lewin clipping the post with a chance in the untimely 2-0 defeat by Fulham last weekend demonstrated the margins at this level and denied him a ninth goal of the campaign. He is confident of increasing his output.
Growing up in Sheffield, a few streets away from the Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, as it turns out, he would score “50 in a season, ridiculous amounts” for Handsworth Boys and was a goalscoring midfielder back then. Although he believes that the goals will come naturally, the search for an edge continues. He watches videos of striking luminaries in an effort to find the minutiae that could make a difference.
“As a young boy, and even now, I would watch past strikers like Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba and I watched Diego Costa when he had that unbelievable season at Chelsea. You have Sergio Agüero and Harry Kane.
“I want to be alongside them, competing with them, and it would be daft of me not to take notice of what they are doing. It is what they do before they actually receive the ball, and the positions they pick up before you can even see the chance. Defenders are so quick these days you have to give yourself the best chance of getting half a yard to get in first.”
The repercussions of not doing so are clear. While the Everton director of football, Marcel Brands, also believes in Calvert-Lewin, the threat of reinforcements being recruited lingers. Calvert-Lewin ends as he began: discussing doubt and expectation.
“I always think that, no matter how you do, when you are at a club like Everton there is always going to be someone who there is interest in, who might come in or will come in,” he says.
“If you put your attention to something that has not even happened yet, how can you put full focus into what you are doing in the here and now? I have an opportunity now which I want to take and it is an important time for me in my career and my future at Everton.
“I always believe that in the next game I will set the world alight. When I do put all the pieces together, and I do start hitting the back of the net, then I am on a good course.”