Declan Rice is about to make his 150thPremier League appearance for West Ham, the team he now captains; he was key to England’s unforgettable run to the final of Euro 2020 and is one of the most coveted players in football. And all this before he has even turned 23.
No wonder Rice freely admits to feeling "unstoppable" and that“there are no limits” to what he can do.“Everything I have done this year has been like a kind of vision," he says. "Things I wanted to do, wanted to achieve.”
Rice has accomplished so much in the last 12 months alone, he runs out of time to cover it all in our interview on Thursday morning. So he decides he wantsto resume it at lunchtime to discuss his personal highlights of the summer, his “100 per cent” belief that England will win something soon, David Moyes’ brutal ultimatum on his return as West Ham manager, why he had to duet with Ed Sheeran, and singing “Rice, Rice Baby” (adapting the Vanilla Ice song) to “a random geezer” which made him an internet sensation.
Rice talks as he plays - at a mile a minute.“I've always been that loud kid with a personality," he admits."I’m always outgoing, I’ll speak to anyone.”
But, first, the motivation. It is clear something changed for Rice in 2021. He was already an outstanding performer but he has now taken his game to a new level. Last summer, amid speculation over Rice’s future, Moyes claimed he would be a “bargain” at £100million. At the time, that raised eyebrows, but few would question it now.
“My dad [Sean] always says it to me, when I step on the pitch: ‘What have you got to lose?’ And I have that mindset,” Rice explains. “It’s like, ‘I have got 90 minutes here, why am I going to hold myself back? Why am I going to limit myself? I am being compared to so many top players but if you want to be a top player you need to be in the game all the time. I am being constantly watched and I need to try and be the best player on the pitch every time I go out there. Honestly that's my mentality.”
There was a moment when it 'clicked'. It came in the away dressing room at Newcastle United on the opening weekend of the season. Rice had only been back in training two weeks, after his exertions at Euro 2020 and West Ham were 2-1 down.
“After I played in the final [of the Euros] and I got a lot of praise, it was like ‘if I can do this on a European stage, in a final, with no nerves and go out there and do what I have just done then I can do it easily in the Premier League’,” Rice reasons.
“It took me half a game. At half-time I was a bit rusty but I remember in the second half it took off. I just felt unstoppable. I was doing things with the ball, dribbling past players, starting attacks, running past people. It felt like everything fell into place.
“What I had done in the Euros final, it felt like it just clicked. I just thought from there that if I carry on like this I don’t feel that anyone, when I am on my game, can stop me. From the first game this season I have had that confidence and it has just built and built and built.
“I feel like this season I have matured, I have pretty much grown into a man now. I have been doing things that people obviously didn’t think I could do on a football pitch but I have known myself I can do it.”
'WhenJorginhomissed I thought we would win the Euros'
West Ham went on to win 4-2 at St James Park and are enjoying another impressive season, lying fifth in the league ahead of Saturday’s away game at Crystal Palace - Rice's 150th game for the club, the youngest player ever to achieve that milestone.The club are also into the last 16 of the Europa League as they setabout building on last season's impressive progress under Moyes.
But much more of them later. First there are the Euros and Rice’s abiding memories of England's campaign, which came soclose to delivering a first major trophy for 55 years.
The moment that stands out came in the fateful penalty shoot-out, andJordan Pickford’s remarkable save from Jorginho – a stop that kept England's hopes alive.
“The fans erupted,” Rice says. “Before he took it, I thought ‘he is so good at penalties, Jorginho, it’s done’. But when 'Picks' saved, I was like: ‘Hold on a minute, their best penalty-taker has just missed. We are now going to kick on and win it’."
Fate had other ideas, with Bukayo Saka's subsequent miss sealing England's defeat, but the thrill of that glorioussummer when anything seemed possible has still not dissipatedfor Rice.
“I remember the fans singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ before the game. Standing in the tunnel, I was buzzing, just wanting to go out there. I had no fear. It was a one-off game. Now, seeing that all back, you want to re-live those moments - but obviously with the trophy at the end of it.”
It is the last-16 victory over Germany that is his most cherished game. “We had only scored two goals in the group and there was a lot of talk about how we weren't playing well enough, orscoring enough goals.It was a knock-out game, and just imagine losing to Germany having only scored two goals at Wembley? There was a lot of pressure."
Rice was magnificent, again, his superhuman efforts summed up when he collapsed with cramp just before England’s second goal, but still tried to join in the celebrations. The footage of him buckling to the floor as he attempted to charge the length of the field, clutching his leg and howling in pain, went viral and Rice freely admits he finds watching it back "hilarious".
This is typical: Rice may be a member of English football's gilded elite but he is keen not to take himself too seriously. He recalls the timehe was forced to sing the Oasis hit 'Wonderwall' with Sheeran after the musician turned up at St George’s Park for a surprise concert inthe middle of England'sEuros campaign.
“I had been late for a meeting and they said, ‘you’ve got to sing’… I said, ‘no chance, I’m not singing, I’ll do anything but sing’,” They were all cracking up but went quiet on it.
"Then Harry Kane organised for Ed to come in and see the lads and have a bit of a chill night. He’s gone: ‘You’ve got to get up now and sing’. So we were sat outside on benches and Ed was just playing his guitar and I was singing ‘Wonderwall’. Incredible, amazing, so good.”
It is not the only time Rice has sung. There was also the episode on Twitter when he joined in a karaoke party, the popular “Sing Your Dialect” event run by teenager Jacob McLaughlin. “I was actually sat at home and I got tagged in that,” Rice says. “I was with my missus and she was going, ‘just do it Dec’ and I was umming and ahhing, and I thought, ‘you know what, I’ll do it’ and to be fair it didn’t go down too bad. The gaffer [Moyes] obviously didn’t have a clue it was going on!”
'The manager told us if we didn't like it, we could do one'
Rice points out that, in the age of Covid restrictions, "going on Twitter and singing to a random geezer is the normal thing I’ve done recently”. And it underlines his determination to stay connected to people: it is no surprise, for example, that in contrast to many of his peers, he runs his own social media accounts.
"My job is a footballer but I’m a normal person,” he says. “Football fans think footballers are trained and told to say stuff and are not running their own social media accounts. I think it’s important and it’s great to interact with fans. They pay a lot of money to come and watch us. They sing their hearts out. They give a lot of support. It wouldn’t be authentic if it was someone else replying and doing stuff on a player’s behalf.”
It helps that West Ham have been flying and the toxic match in March 2018, when they lost 3-0 at home to Burnley in a relegation battle and angry fans ran on the pitch, is thankfully a distant memory.
“It wasn’t a good place to be,” admits Rice, who was on the bench that day. “Back then, I wasn’t the player I am now but I knew I was good enough and every season since I’ve just kicked on.”
Moyes’ return, two years ago, has been absolutely crucial. “He was someone we needed at the time. When [Manuel] Pellegrini left we lost our way a little bit. He’s got that presence, that authority. He’s no nonsense. He won’t take any s--- and he’ll say it how it is. If you don’t like his methods and the way he plays you can do one. That’s pretty much what he said when he came in.
“We had a meeting and he put up loads of stats on a board, running stats, distance covered and he said: ‘It’s not good enough. If you don’t want part of it, then don’t play’. It was literally like that. Reading that as players made you think, ‘Have we been putting ourselves about enough’?”
The results have been obvious, with West Ham now one of the hardest-working teams in the league - Rice covers, on average, seven-and-a-half miles a game - but the uplift in performances have had consequences.
Rice, for example, now finds himself a marked man.“I have noticed more and more this season that teams are trying to stop the way I am playing a little bit more,” he says. “It does become frustrating but that is part of becoming better - learning different ways to get on the ball, learning how not to be selfish and moving out of your position to get other players on the ball. Always in games you are constantly thinking about the team and how you can beat the opposition.”
He is constantly developing, working with club captain Mark Noble (“he teaches me how to be a good person around the place”) and now regards himself more as a “box-to-box” midfielder. “You have to be superfit as well. After 10 minutes you are breathing out of your a---!” Rice laughs, before joking that as he moves further up the pitch maybe he will one day become a striker.
“I would love to try up front, but I don’t think the manager would do it! I was a centre-half but I feel like now I have too much in me to be playing centre-half. I feel like I have too much to give higher up the pitch to be playing at the back. I feel like I would be limiting myself completely if I played at centre-back.
"When I first broke in I was just an out-and-out holding midfielder. I was in front of the back four, sweeping up, steady, had some good games, played really well there and enjoyed it. But now I feel I am bigger, stronger and better on the ball.”
2021 is already a memory. There is 2022 to look forward to - and so much more beyond that.
“If I keep working hard and keep giving it everything then hopefully I can have more memorable achievements and big moments in my career.”
