Exclusive:Leeds United's Dominic Calvert-Lewin - shushing Elland Road and turning down Champions League club

Calvert-Lewin was recently the cover star of the matchday programme and with that privilege comes the responsibility of an interview with club media staff. During that conversation he spoke of just wanting to play for and entertain the working class people of West Yorkshire because he considers himself of that ilk.

He's not from West Yorkshire, but the striker didn't grow up that far from Leeds. Calvert-Lewin was raised in Sheffield in a place called Malin Bridge. It's one tram stop from Hillsborough Park where he and his pals would take on older kids in kickabouts, and a mile from Sheffield Wednesday's ground.

"I guess I'm gonna say [my childhood] was normal," he told the YEP last week, sitting down after a long programme of media duties that come as part and parcel of the gig when you're named Premier League Player of the Month.

"Very family orientated, same group of friends that I knew from primary school into secondary school, that I'm still in touch with now, just humble. Enjoyed playing out my friends, playing Playstation, football orientated. Football everything, lived and breathed football from the day I can remember. I had a good upbringing."

Neither might like to hear it but Sheffield folk and Leeds folk are not too dissimilar. Friendly, down to earth, proud of their cities and not shy of giving you their very honest opinion. The down to earth part is what stuck with Calvert-Lewin.

"I think that's something that was always ingrained - stay humble," he said. "My dad always used to say, no matter what you do, keep your feet on the ground and just always have that humility. So I guess my core values are built from that, to just always work hard for what you're trying to try to achieve. And also self belief, that was ingrained in me from young, believe in myself and whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve. That came from my upbringing."

Despite living in such close proximity to Hillsborough and being outnumbered by Owls, Calvert-Lewin was brought up to be a Blade.

"It was mainly Sheffield Wednesday fans," he said. "To be honest, it was my dad. My dad grew up a Sheff United fan. Now he's a fan of whoever I play for. But yeah, it was like 70:30, there were a few Sheff United fans in my school but I grew up playing on Hillsborough Park, which is a stone's throw from Sheff Wednesday."

Leeds United rivalry

Blades, like Owls, don't tend to be too fond of Leeds United. Perhaps he's being diplomatic, or grew up influenced by the fact that between his 10th and 20th birthdays his club only faced Leeds twice, but Calvert-Lewin never really felt much animosity towards the club up the road. He just wanted to beat them.

"I had a lot of tough battles against Leeds United academy when I was a kid," he said. "They were always tough, and I would say confident and almost arrogant when you played against Leeds and you got that big club feel when Sheff United used to go up against Leeds. But I guess it's more like my dad's era, where he probably understands the rivalry a bit more. But me, as a kid growing up, it wasn't as big a rivalry for me. I just knew that Leeds weren't too far away, and we played them loads as kids. We always wanted to win."

Prior to taking on big old Leeds with the Blades youth team sides, Calvert-Lewin got his first taste of football with Handsworth Boys. It's a club with a big reputation in Sheffield, so both of the city's professional clubs are keenly aware of the talent coming through at Olivers Mount. Calvert-Lewin's first memory of an organised football match was in the orange shirt of Handsworth, for whom he scored plenty of goals. Just not as a striker.

"I was a central midfielder from the age of seven until 17, and then it wasn't until my coach at the time, Travis Binnion funnily enough, sat me down, along with the academy manager Nick Cox. I'd hit a bit of a stagnated period. And they were like, if we wrote all your attributes down on paper, where would you say that player plays, you know, physical, can run fast, can jump, can score goals. I said striker. And he's like: 'we're gonna try you up front.' And the center midfield position was quite congested in the first team at Sheffield United. And then that's when I went on loan to Stalybridge Celtic."

That loan spell gave Calvert-Lewin a bit of a war story and a scar, earned from an aerial duel on his Conference North debut against Hyde. He took a whack, stayed on the pitch and scored twice. Playing as a striker. He scored six in five, as a striker. But even a decade ago, in 2016, he was not known exclusively as an out and out number 9. He played second striker, attacking midfielder and left wing positions on loan for Northampton Town and back at Sheffield United as he made a first team breakthrough.

Then in August 2016 Everton paid £1.5m and he went on to become the striker that scored 57 Premier League goals and hit the net four times in 11 international games for England. It wasn't just his goals that made Leeds jump at the chance of signing him as a free agent, though. Goals would be a bonus. What they saw in Calvert-Lewin was a big, physical targetman who could give a newly-promoted side a chance to play their football in opposition territory. A striker who could unsettle defenders, win headers, attack and defend set-pieces and put a shift in.

Shushing Elland Road

What Calvert-Lewin and his wife Sandra saw in Leeds was the right place to put down new roots, on soil that he could previously have described as a less-than-friendly environment.

"I remember Elland Road being hostile," he said. "I remember taking a penalty, and the noise when I was running up to take that penalty, and I actually think I shushed the crowd after. But I guess that was a sign of my personality, and you always think as a player - and I've experienced now that I've come here - it's tough going up against it, but when you've got that behind you, it can be a superpower.

"Obviously, I spoke to Jack Harrison, played with him at Everton. And then it all happened so quickly, and I was keeping things so in-house, because there was a lot of noise around me at the time that between, really my wife and I, we came to the conclusion that this was the right place for me, having the conversations with the club, and yeah, we made that decision together."

But Leeds were not alone in viewing Calvert-Lewin as a player who could more than do a job. As free agents go, even with injury question marks, this was one with so much experience at the very top level and so much physicality. And even with the decision made to come to Leeds, a Champions League club came in at the 11th hour. He politely laughs off an invitation to say who that was but doesn't deny the story.

"You're the first person to ask me that question, and I ponder over it sometimes and I look at what's happened over the last five months, how it feels good when a plan comes together," he said. "And the plan's not finished. The ultimate goal, regardless of what I achieve on a personal level, is to stay in the Premier League. And that's been in my mind from the moment I joined the club. But when it came to it, I was free, and I was speaking to different clubs across Europe, and there was the narrative around me that was that - you hear this as a player, especially when you've got all summer to do nothing but think - perhaps I was finished, people would say that I maybe didn't have anything to offer anymore in the Premier League. And I guess maybe that's where ego comes in a little bit, and I wanted to prove more so to myself that I'll decide when I'm finished, and that's when the Leeds opportunity came. I had the conversations with people at the club, and then spoke to the manager and I knew in my heart that this was a perfect platform for me to go and prove to myself, but also show the world what I can do on a football pitch."

DCL’s doubters

Everything that has happened since has proven a lot of people wrong and a small number of people very right. Calvert-Lewin has been fit and available to a degree that only he and the Leeds medical staff probably thought possible. He says their attention to detail gave him great confidence that Leeds would be the 'perfect environment' to get back to his best physically. The proof is in his 15 starts from 20 top flight games and his nine goals. He has become vital to the team in the way the recruitment chiefs hoped but could not guarantee he would.

"It's a sweetener, you know?" said Calvert-Lewin. "Proving people wrong is not the main driving force of what I do every day. But I'm also aware that there was a very strong narrative around me. And when things are not in your control...I had to sit for a long time, for a few weeks and just let things kind of play out, and people talk amongst themselves, and have had to bide my time. And I also know that the best way to respond to criticism or to change narratives is to perform on a football pitch, and I knew that that's what I'd have to wait to do, and I knew that I would do it eventually. When it comes together and you start to do it, it's obviously a feeling, but more so when everybody doubts you, you also have people that believe in you, people welcoming me to the football club, and believing that I would be good for the club. So it's nice to also prove them right as well."

Just like when he was at Stalybridge, he scored six in five to prompt one of the catchiest songs of the season so far from Leeds fans, a song he laughingly admits was sung in his car. Six in five became eight in nine as the striker caught fire and Leeds put together an impressive run to climb out of and pull away from the drop zone. He can only recall a spell under Carlo Ancelotti at Everton to rival this latest run and credits his team-mates for their help.

Half-time at Man City

They have credited him too, on numerous occasions, for what he has brought to the table this season, both seen and unseen. Brenden Aaronson described Calvert-Lewin's dressing room input at half-time at the Etihad as unforgettable.

"I can't remember word for word, because when you say things out of passion and emotion and heat at the moment, it's hard to remember everything, but I just remember leaning on my previous experience as a Premier League player and saying that there can be pivotal moments in seasons where things can change positively and negatively. I recognise that more so because I've been through it before with Everton, where we had three massive games at that stage in the season against top six opposition, and everyone writes you off before you've even played your first game. And then there's two ways to look at it. You can write yourselves off, or you can go and think that we've got a real serious chance here to change the narrative, change momentum into our favor and build from it. I said something along those lines at Man City to kind of just rally the guys and make sure that off the back of the run that we'd had that we can still believe, and we have to believe, that we can compete. And I believe that week has been the catalyst leading into, probably my personal form, and that coinciding with the team's collective form, and that's something that we have to keep building."

At 28 Calvert-Lewin has achieved plenty. Premier League and international goals, creating a family with the partner he married last year, getting a tweet from comedy royalty Bob Mortimer. Plenty to be proud of for a boy from a humble upbringing. But looking back makes him look forward and there's plenty still to do.

"Wow, really proud, really proud of the position I've worked, I guess, to get myself into," he says when asked how it feels to look at the life he's able to give his daughter.

"And there's a deeper thought to that question and where I am at this moment in time, and my decision making in the summer and my daughter was pivotal to that. I was swinging her on the swing every day, when I probably should have been at pre-season somewhere playing football. And I thought to myself, like in the future, if I made a decision now to maybe leave the Premier League or take a move out of comfort, how do I want my kids to view me in the future? And I wanted them to see that I had resilience when my back was against the wall, when people doubted me, and I was able to come back and do what I'd done once and do it again and again and again. And for me, that was staying in the Premier League, staying in the heat, staying in the kitchen and fighting every day to get back to the level that I know I'm capable of.

"It's definitely been a 12 months of growth, and one that I've thoroughly enjoyed. And I look back now and thank myself for the decisions that I made then to keep persevering, and now I'm reaping the reward. I'm someone that believes that things can change so quickly, you just have to keep going. Keep going every day, keep going."