For John Stones, it has been one of those weeks, beginning last Friday night when the England centre-half feared he had fractured his foot against Iceland. Was the European Championship over for him? Thankfully not. Then came the stomach bug that gave him a torrid 36 hours from Tuesday evening, his insides churning; the loneliness gripping, too, as he was confined to his room at the team hotel.
Stones has seen his longtime on-pitch partner Harry Maguire ruled out because of injury, leaving him as the only central defender in the squad with previous tournament experience. The 30-year-old has plenty of that – it will be his fifth major finals here in Germany – and with that comes responsibility, pressure.
If Stones feels it, he wears it ridiculously lightly. He is simply not the type of guy to have the walls close in on him. His coolness is reassuring, fortifying those around him before England’s opening tie against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday night.
Stones has moved through the injury scare, the illness and, the way he tells it, the secret is to recall his childhood and channel the innocence and purity of it in relation to his game. When he opened the welcome package that the Football Association put in his room on Monday, he found something to reinforce it all.
“We got a surprise box with nice things from the family with the kids and there was a picture in mine that my partner put in of me and my dad,” Stones says. “I was signing at Barnsley, I was super young and I was in a full England kit. That kind of goes back to making it all relatable and what you love. What you play football for and what you have always done.
“People will feel pressure in different ways and deal with it in different ways. A strength of mine is not thinking too much about what is going on and what is expected.
“Every England fan, no matter what age … they buy a shirt and wear it with pride. And I relate back to my younger self. I loved England, I loved playing, I loved putting on that shirt and trying to score goals like Beckham, which I couldn’t do but I loved it.
“I don’t think it can be the pressures of it all or the expectation. There’s always going to be that and I think it is healthy but don’t think into it too much in that respect. It [the welcome box] was a nice touch and it reminds you what is important. It’s like when a song comes on and it makes you feel a certain way. The same with an old picture.
“I’ve got a disposable camera with me here; when I was a kid, I used to get the disposable. I can go back after this and not know what pictures I’ve taken whereas on the phone you can see it every day. They’re things that you miss from that.”
Declan Rice told a funny story before the March internationals that seemed to capture Stones perfectly. It was Rice’s Arsenal versus Stones’s Manchester City and Rice wanted to see what Stones thought. Except Stones did not know that it was coming up.
“A strength of mine is not thinking too much about what’s going on,” Stones says. “I kind of disconnect training and games to the rest of my time, which works well for me. It allows me to give everything when I’m on the training pitch and be a kind of different person almost [off it]. I don’t think it’s changed over the years – my desire to win on the training pitch and in games, to encourage and lead from the back.”
It is difficult, though, not to see Stones’s medal collection at City as a source of personal reassurance. When he won the Champions League final against Internazionale in June 2023, he completed the set and he has since added a sixth Premier League title over this past season. He also has two FA Cups and two League Cups.
“Yes, that is massive,” Stones says. “Thinking back to the Champions League final we lost [in 2021 to Chelsea] and then losing the Euros final [to Italy at Wembley] after that … I said to myself: ‘I never want to feel like that again.’ So going into the Inter final, I had no emotion which was really strange. No real nerves. Being calm. I knew what to expect. It was like: ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ You shouldn’t fear it. You should embrace the feeling of something you’ve never done before. Grasp that emotion. I feel the same here.”
It has been a strange season for Stones, scarred by fitness issues and problems getting into the City team. One statistic stands out: he was an unused substitute on 17 occasions for them. After picking up an injury for England against Belgium on 26 March, he played in only six more games for City, including the FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United. Overall, he started 12 league matches. “Difficult, very difficult,” he says. “It was not how I wanted to end the season.”
It is not over yet, of course, and Stones is bullish when he assesses England’s chances. He “100%” believes the team will win the tournament; he does not make the prediction purely in hope. “That’s something I’ve inherited over the years from winning a lot of trophies and being in big games,” Stones says. “I’m trying to pass that on. All of us in the room hope we can win but believing is a totally different thing.
“I believed we could win the last Euros at Wembley. It wasn’t meant to be but look at where it got us and how well we did in that tournament. There’s a TV programme out about it and I saw a trailer of it, which brought the goosebumps. I thought: ‘We did that. We created that belief and that dream of it nearly happening.’ So there’s a hunger for me to get over the line and get it done.
“What percentage of it all is mentality? I’m not good at maths but I’d say it’s a lot. To be able to control those emotions and channel them into the right things is huge. I don’t know if it’s a spiritual kind of thing. Everyone’s different and you might believe different things but I kind of work off those [things] and always bring a positive mindset. I don’t think it’s done too badly for me over the years.”
