Ezri Konsa does not take long to reply to messages.
His phonebook consists of team-mates, old and new, former coaches and those who have helped shape his career. His roots remain in Newham, east London, and he regularly keeps in touch with the people who led him away from the wrong track and on the way to Aston Villa and England.
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“He’s so easy to keep in touch with,” says Steve Avory, Konsa’s academy director at Charlton Athletic. “If we ask Ezri to do anything, he is only too willing to cooperate. A year ago, one of my other coaches asked Ezri to get involved in a parents’ evening and send a video message to the players. I sent him a text after his England call-up and he responded immediately.”
“I’m delighted for him,” says Jason Pearce, Konsa’s captain and central defensive partner at Charlton. “He’s a good lad. I’m still able to pick up the phone and ring him and he is brilliant with me.”
Speak to those who have played, grown up or taught him and Konsa the England international has a deserved ring to it. He won his first cap as a substitute against Brazil in March before starting the game against Belgium three days later.
The 26-year-old played 3,732 minutes in 2023 — the most of any player in the Premier League — and even when called upon as a reliable option at right-back under Villa head coach Unai Emery, has the highest percentage success rate of dribblers tackled of any player this season at 87 per cent. Both not only serve as a sign of his receptive attitude but also a distinct professionalism instilled from an early age.
To trace back to the beginning requires starting here, on Wanstead Flats fields in east London.
It is a sunny Monday morning in mid-January and the large grass pitches are soaked in mud. There are nearly two dozen goals, only two of which have nets in, with a junior 11-a-side game about to get underway between local schools. It is the home of Senrab, a Sunday League football club that boasts talented alumni including Konsa, John Terry, Sol Campbell and Ledley King.
Being a boyhood Tottenham Hotspur supporter, Konsa’s game was naturally shaped by King and though Dimitar Berbatov was his favourite player, the defender was who he aspired to follow.
The London Stratford skyline can be seen in the distance, but the 20-minute bus ride from Wanstead Flats, stretching across 462 acres, to central Newham, where Konsa was raised — taking the 330 to Wanstead Park — shows a grittier picture. The journey cuts through Kempton Road before a congested mile-long high street filled with buses.
“Ezri is a huge Tottenham fan and they weren’t doing great at the time,” says Konsa’s former teacher and now assistant headteacher at Cumberland Community School, Kabir Jagwani. “I’m a Liverpool fan, so we would have banter when Spurs would lose. We used his love of football in class.
“He wasn’t the strongest in maths, so what I did was change a lot of my lessons so they were based around football. If we were dealing with figures, I would talk about stadium attendances or transfer fees. Ezri did much better that way.”
The 276 bus from the town centre stops at Newham Hospital, adjacent to Konsa’s first secondary school, Cumberland.
Konsa attended Cumberland until Year 9, dovetailing studies with his football education at Charlton, having joined the academy at under-11 level. Cumberland, like Senrab, has a history of schooling young footballers, but Konsa is their biggest name.
“Ezri had this thing about him that when he didn’t feel like working in class, he used to always try to just talk about football,” laughs Jagwani. “He would try to draw me in. I remember him saying, ‘Sir, when I make it big and play for Tottenham, I’m going to get you tickets so you’re going to watch me play’.”
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Konsa is the middle child of three siblings, with a younger sister and an older brother. His father is Congolese and his mother is Angolan. Konsa credits his older brother Antonio — who now looks after his off-the-field work and was the intermediary that helped negotiate his five-year contract extension in September — for steering him away from trouble.
“My area was rough. Proper rough,” Konsa told The Athletic in 2020. “You heard a lot about kids getting stabbed and things like that, so football helped me, 100 per cent.”
Newham has the second highest crime rate in London and is among the most deprived areas. In 2023, there were 141 crimes per one thousand people, 34 per cent higher than in London overall. It is partly why Konsa has the word “blessed” inked on his left hand. A reminder, he says, of “how far I’ve come and how blessed I am”.
“It’s not safe on the streets with the knives,” says Jagwani. “But if you’ve got kids who have got a passion, that’s brilliant. I asked him if there was a Plan B and he said, ‘No, I’m going to be a footballer’. I told him a lot of people don’t end up making it and he just said, ‘Trust me, sir, I’m going to be a footballer’. He stayed focused, going to training, school and home. He didn’t have time to be on the streets.”
A local scout had watched Konsa play for Senrab and after one game passed on his number to his father. The 10-year-old was invited for a six-week trial at Charlton. Konsa had been playing — and dominating — in central midfield and defence.
“The first thing that struck me about Ezri was his athletic profile,” says Avory. “He was tall, lean and quick. We could comfortably play him in midfield and anywhere across the back four.”
Konsa joined Charlton and football swiftly took priority. Homework became a struggle, with his parents alerted to late hand-ins. He would spend days off school training, granted permission by Cumberland and would occasionally arrive late on Mondays, shattered by training and matches over the weekend.
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“He wasn’t one of those who would take the day off, but he would come in looking exhausted and say, ‘I can’t work today. You don’t understand how hard it has been’,” says Jagwani. “But he still tried. That was the thing about him — he was cheeky and never stopped smiling.
“He knew where the line was and he knew when not to cross it. He used to do my homework but would get detentions for not doing other subjects’ homework. To get him to improve, I used to say to him that another classmate had got the answer and because he was so competitive, he would try to get the next answer first.”
Seven and a half miles south, in Greenwich, Andy Bowers speaks to The Athletic. Bowers is Konsa’s former PE teacher after he moved to Harris Academy from Cumberland.
On the board outside the sports hall is a photo of Konsa among Harris alumni. Next to him are Brighton & Hove Albion’s Jeremy Sarmiento and Karlan Grant, now at Cardiff City on loan from West Bromwich Albion. Below is Luton Town’s Alfie Doughty and other athletes in various sports. Both Konsa and Grant moved to Harris due to the school’s partnership with Charlton, spending every day studying and playing together.
“They were thick as thieves,” says Bowers. “Ezri was a cheeky chappy who was very driven, but football was the driving factor. He and Karlan had a bespoke timetable. They would be out of lessons on Wednesday afternoons to train with Charlton. They were given a lot of tutor support that tried to catch them up in their education.”
It is midday and various sports are taking place. There is astroturf, concrete netball courts and a separate gated field with rugby and football pitches at the back. Charlton’s training ground is a 15-minute drive away.
“We started a link with Charlton’s academy as the club wanted to make sure scholars were close to the training ground. Ezri was the first batch that came,” says Bowers.
Charlton had offered Konsa a scholarship a year early, aged 15. A “nailed-on” decision, Avory puts it, having become a regular for the under-18 side. “The arrangement was to bring him in for four afternoons a week and a couple of evening sessions,” he says.
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Through Harris’ programme, Charlton had scope to oversee his progress on and off the pitch. They would pick him up from Newham in the mornings, driving from the other side of the Blackwall Tunnel, before dropping him off in the evening.
“Naturally confident would be a polite way of describing Ezri,” smiles Bowers. “He was extremely popular, confident and not a shrinking violet. But with that, he had the work ethic and ability to back that up.”
Konsa left Harris after completing his GCSEs at 16. Aside from PE, he attained modest though respectable grades, managing to pass maths; a subject felt to be his kryptonite.
Contact time with Charlton coaches increased further. He stayed malleable but became fine-tuned, drilling the specifics of three positions; right-back, centre-back and defensive midfield. He soon stepped up to train with the first team and play with the under-21s.
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“He was a bubbly character,” says Pearce. “Some of the time, he would be with his mates from the younger ages and mess about with the ball, but he did have a few within the squad like Karlan that made him feel comfortable. He would ask me and coaches for advice and took it all on board.”
“There was still significant work for him to do,” says Avory. “He needed to get his footwork right when he was in one-on-one situations. In possession, I looked for 360-degree awareness, so I put him in midfield where he was receiving from different angles and under pressure from different angles. But wherever he played, I saw his comfort on the ball and (he was) well aware of where pressure was coming from — look at how many fouls he wins now as a good example.”
With every step forward, precocious attributes came to the fore. Initially at Charlton and then later Brentford, team-mates noted Konsa’s anticipation.
“He was composed in possession and used his body well for his age,” Pearce says. “He was very clever buying a lot of free kicks. When he first came into the team I would say to him he was trying to buy free kicks. He would dive a lot on the floor, having tried to nick the ball in front of the striker.
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“His heading ability was not great. It was something I worked with him on. We discussed how to time his jump and his technique — he learned quickly and we complemented each other. I was the wholehearted John Terry type, he was the calmer, polished Rio Ferdinand type.”
In December 2015, Konsa signed his first professional contract and was included in the squad to face Burnley for the first time eight days later.
Yet it was not until the 2016-17 season that he broke through, making his debut under manager Russell Slade in the EFL Cup defeat against Cheltenham Town. A sign of his swift acclimatisation, Konsa became a mainstay, making 39 appearances in all competitions that season, mainly as a centre-back but also as a right-back and in midfield, and was named the club’s young player of the year.
“His consistency levels were incredible. With the raw materials he had, he deserved his opportunity,” says Slade. “Ezri had an ability to read the game. If he made mistakes, he wouldn’t make the same one again. He was a pleasure to work with because he knew he didn’t know everything. There’s a common thread with him and Harry Kane who I coached; they picked the brains of management and the experienced players.”
Despite signing a three-year extension the summer before, Konsa had a growing number of suitors. He made 39 League One appearances in 2017-18 and 47 appearances in the following campaign as Charlton reached the League One play-off semi-finals.
Charlton missing out on promotion meant keeping Konsa was out of the question. Brentford’s scouting team had compiled extensive reports, advocated by directors of football Phil Giles and Rasmus Ankersen.
“If we were in the Championship, we would probably have been able to hold onto him, even if it was only one more year until a club like Aston Villa came calling,” says Avory. “If he stayed, his value would have grown hugely.”
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In June 2018, Brentford finalised a £2.5million deal, agreeing a three-year contract with an option of a further 12 months. The manager was Dean Smith, who would sign Konsa for Villa the following season, but Thomas Frank, promoted from assistant manager, took charge in October. Even if he only worked with Konsa for less than four months, Smith was convinced his qualities would translate to Premier League level.
“We were looking for defenders and he came on the radar,” says Lars Friis, formerly Brentford’s development coach and part of Frank’s backroom team. “Ezri is well-built and an athletic guy. He was aggressive in how he played and we saw how he treated the ball, which suited our habits.
“He needed to be more mature in his game. He took risks but that was why we liked him. The way he defended was forward-thinking and his self-belief was top.”
“Thomas Frank got us doing drills in being aggressive to cut out passes through a coaching tactic called sliding,” says Moses Odubajo, a team-mate at Brentford. “When you’re doing those drills, you probably think, ‘Oh, I’m never going to be in this situation’, but later down the line, they come in handy.”
Smith and Frank refined Konsa into a centre-back exclusively, with all 42 of his Championship appearances in the position. While Brentford finished 11th, Konsa impressed and after scoring his first professional goal on the final day, he was selected in England’s under-21 squad for the European Championships.
“He came with a lot of confidence, a slight arrogance, but a good bit of arrogance,” says former Brentford team-mate Alan Judge. “He was very outgoing, was close to Ollie Watkins and took being told off well, which is what senior players want to see.”
Konsa commuted from east to west London for training with Josh Dasilva, having stayed close to where he was raised. He would arrive early and go through various stretching routines and stay behind after training, working individually with coaches. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Konsa completed power circuits in the gym.
“His mentality shaped how he played,” says Judge. “I was coming back from a broken leg and I could see it from the sidelines. It made a big difference when a centre-half like Ezri would run with the ball and suck players towards him. For me in midfield, it made it easier to make passing angles.”
After Smith had taken charge at Villa and got them back into the Premier League, he returned to Brentford to sign Konsa in a deal worth £12m in the summer of 2019. Konsa scored on his debut in the EFL Cup tie against Crewe Alexandra.
“It was obvious this guy would make it,” says Friis. “He had all the attributes. We were not happy to lose him, but it was fantastic to see him go to the top level. Ezri had a positive arrogance. He behaved on the pitch with a modern attitude you want from defenders.”
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“When he first came to Brentford, I was shocked he’d been playing in League One, just because of the confidence in the way he carries himself,” Judge says. “Dean saw that and liked it a lot. He went to Villa and he’s not looked back.”
Now an England international and among the Premier League’s best-performing defenders, Konsa veered away from distraction and has carved out a career that remains an immense source of pride at his former clubs and schools. And, whenever possible, those from his past do not hesitate to remind him of just that.
“For us as a school, it’s a success story,” says Bowers. “He is someone we can hang our hat on and say we’ve helped along the journey to where he is today. For the young students here, they want to follow the same path.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
