England’s Ashley Young before World Cup: I am as hungry now as I was playing in my garden as a boy

As Young now takes on the role as being this squad’s eldest statesman he insists that he has not changed from his first emergence into the senior game

So much has changed over Ashley Young’s England career but his hunger has not. This England team is a very different place from Steve McClaren’s side – David Beckham and the rest – that Young first stepped into more than 10 years ago.

But as Young now takes on the role as being this squad’s eldest statesman – turning 33 just before the semi-finals – he insists that he has not changed from his first emergence into the senior game.

That same ambition and desire for football has gone nowhere, even now, well into his 30s and after seven seasons at Manchester United, where he has become one of the leaders in the dressing room.

The same hunger that saw him stick around at Watford part-time as a teenager, even when they did not offer him a scholarship, to prove he was still worth a place in the academy. The same hunger that earned him a place in Aidy Boothroyd’s team in the Championship, not the easiest place for a teenager. The same hunger that fuelled him all the way from Watford up into the biggest club in the country, despite the controversy and, frankly, unpopularity that followed him around in his career.

So while some people wonder what to make of this new veteran Ashley Young, the man himself is insistent: he is the same as ever. “I wouldn’t say I’ve changed at all,” he said. “A lot of people will keep saying I’m a different person, especially when I go across those white lines. I think it’s just the hunger and desire and passion I’ve got for them game. I’m a born winner. I want to win games and that’s why I show that.”

It would have been easy enough for Young to slow down or step back during his wilderness years. David Moyes barely picked him for Manchester United during his brief spell at Old Trafford, and Young was not selected for England for four years, a run that only ended six months ago. But through it all he never gave up on starring for United and England and here is now, ready to fly out to a tournament few would have pencilled him in for. Young has never been to a World Cup before but now he finally has his chance.

“I don’t think I’ve changed at all,” Young said. “I wasn’t in England squads but I never gave up hope of getting back in. I just had to get out there and play football as well as I could, and hopefully the England manager would call me up again. Now he’s done that and I’m going to a World Cup and the excitement for me is massive. I’m delighted. I’m like a kid inside and I just want to get there and get the tournament started.”

That childlike excitement is the link between this summer, England in a World Cup, and the start of Young’s football career even before he joined Watford. It has never left him and it fuels him as much now as it did then. “I’ve always been a born winner, I’m nearly 33 but there are still things I want to win,” he said. “I’ve had the same hunger, the same desire to win, since I started kicking a football when I was five years old.”

That is why the trappings of success have never really motivated Young, and why now he is as determined as ever to keep winning. Driven by the same passion that got him here in the first place. “I’m not one of those players who talks about things off the field,” he said. “It’s about what trophies and titles and cups you’ve won. I will be able to look back on my career and say ‘I’ve won this’. I don’t think that hunger has ever left me.”