The City ace has helped sign up a surprise new recruit ahead of next summer’s World Cup in North America, Canada and Mexico
Former Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch has revealed how Hull City star Liam Millar played matchmaker to help get former Tigers teammate Alfie Jones a shock call-up to the Canada Men’s National Team.
Jones, who left City in the summer after five years to join Championship rivals Middlesbrough, was still with the Tigers when he first started the process of applying for Canadian citizenship, having qualified through one of his grandparents and met Marsch at Cottingham earlier this year.
The defender is expected to take his citizenship oath when he arrives in Toronto for friendlies with Ecuador and Venezuela, though he won’t be joined by Millar, who has remained in East Yorkshire to continue his recovery from a hamstring injury.
“Honestly, how it started was last September, we were in a warm-up in Kansas City, and Liam Millar said to me, ‘You know, there’s a player on Hull City that is Canadian,’ Marsch told One Soccer.
“And I said, ‘What?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, his name’s Alfie Jones, and I said, ‘OK, what position is he?’ He goes, ‘He’s a centre-back. ‘And I said, ‘Well, OK, we should reach out to him.’ ‘He goes, ‘OK, yeah, let me give you his number.’ And so that’s how the whole process started.
“After that camp, I sent Alfie a little note. I’d watched him play. I already knew who he was, but I didn’t know him thoroughly as a player and as a person.
“Then we started communicating, and I went and saw Liam shortly after he had his ACL surgery in the winter, and at that same time, I had the chance to meet Alfie in person.”
Jones joined City from Southampton in the summer of 2020 and went on to become a firm favourite at the MKM Stadium, playing 191 times before moving to Teesside in the summer.
Marsch admits to being impressed by Jones, who was famously described as a ‘Rolls-Royce’ defender by former Tigers boss Grant McCann during City’s League One title-winning campaign in 2021.
“He’s another one of these kinds of high character guys who has had to do it the hard way,” Marsch continued. “It’s almost like it’s perfect that he’s Canadian because his story about how he’s established himself as a professional is so much like so many of our guys.
“I know he’s excited, he’s been working really hard and really diligently to do everything he could to get himself a citizenship, and so we’re right here at the finish line and we’re excited to have him in camp.
“He’s a mobile big centre-back who is very good on the ball. He’s played some in the midfield. He’s really a pure centre-back now, but he’s played midfield in his career. He’s good in the air, but he’s an intelligent guy too.
“When you play in the Championship, even when you stay with one club, you get like 10 coaches. He’s played a lot of different versions of football and adapted really well to it.
“Now that he’s at Middlesbrough, they’ve played some with three in the back, they’ve now played a little bit more in the last few games with four in the back and I think Alfie has shown his quality in all these situations and he’s played for some Red Bull type coaches along the way too, so he knows some of the principles that we care about and that we value with what we’re doing with the national team.
“I think he’s a really well-rounded centre-back that has a lot of good experiences, a lot. He’s had a lot of big challenges in his career, and I think he has the potential to fit in almost immediately with everything we do.”
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