Four years ago Stones did not make the cut for Brazil but now, thanks to Gareth Southgate’s belief, he is a vital part of the national team

When John Stones pulled up a seat to discuss his first proper experiences of a World Cup, nobody was impudent enough to point out that Gareth Southgate’s players will have outlasted the previous England side to make it to this tournament by the close of play on Friday.

On that occasion, Stones was a young defender at Everton who made Roy Hodgson’s standby list for Brazil and travelled to Miami for the pre-tournament camp but was back home when England were knocked out after back-to-back defeats inside the opening week. The warm-up games against Peru and Ecuador provided his first two caps and, by his own admission, it was a lot to take in.

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“I was young, very young, and I felt I had to prove myself to a lot of my heroes, players I’d watched over the years. I was very nervous going into that England squad. It’s difficult to explain. I felt I had to show the lads what I could do and I almost tried too hard.”

Four years on, Stones comes across as a lot more comfortable in his own skin. He still seems surprised to hear himself being described as a mainstay of the England defence – “You think?” he asks – but perhaps that is just because he does not like to take anything for granted. At 24, he still sounds like he is learning the sport. He talks about how Vincent Kompany, the captain at Manchester City, will sometimes take him through video clips to point out areas where the boy from Barnsley could improve.

But he also mentions Kyle Walker’s influence, as a player four years older than himself, for club and country. Walker, he says, is not only a “world-class player” but “personally a massive, massive help ... on and off the pitch, just so calm and always with the right advice.”

It is true, though. Stones has become a mainstay of England’s defence, playing the central position in an all-Yorkshire three-man line with Walker and Harry Maguire. The astonishing detail is that Stones has played more minutes for England (588) since November than he has for Manchester City in the league (540).

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Stones was not even on the bench for some City games after the signing of Aymeric Laporte. He made only four 90-minute appearances in the league during the last seven months of the season and, in ordinary circumstances, he might have feared for his England place bearing in mind Southgate had told his players that if they were not regulars for their clubs they should not expect to play for their national team.

Instead Southgate has made an exception for a player he has championed since taking charge of England’s under-21s for the first time against Moldova in 2013, with an 18-year-old Stones in the starting lineup. “Gareth’s shown a lot of faith in me,” Stones says. “I can’t express enough how thankful I am. Sometimes you’re in difficult spots as players where form’s not right and he’s got a difficult decision to make. I never took my spot for granted in the England team and I never will. I knew I had to fight right until the end, even though some people may say differently.”

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That last remark is an acknowledgment, perhaps, of the criticism he has encountered at times for being too accident-prone and not commanding enough for a centre-half. For the record, he disputes the point. “I never thought I got bullied or pushed off the ball. But if you put me against Andy Carroll I’m never going to beat him in a fight so I have to use my brain.”

However he says that he has been working on “being more aggressive,” trying to avoid the kind of incidents that led to Roberto Firmino’s goal, for example, in Liverpool’s 4-3 defeat of City at Anfield in January. “I’ve had to analyse my game from a very self-critical point of view, be harsh on myself when things don’t go well and make sure I improve.

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“I remember playing against [Diego] Costa and he wants to wind you up and kinda get into your head. You’ve got to beat them mentally, not at their own game. That’s the thing I have learned over the years. Obviously all the gym work, getting older and all the genetics, it takes time. All I can do is keep working hard in the gym, review my games and try to improve in as many respects as I can.”

That is just as well because Panama’s 3-0 defeat by Belgium suggests England’s next opponents in Group G will take a physical approach. “It’s something we’ve spoken about,” Stones says, looking ahead to Sunday’s game in Nizhny Novgorod. “But we’re going to stick to our game plan and cause them as many threats as we can using our own style of play.”

For Stones, that means carte blanche to bring the ball out from the back when he thinks it is worthwhile. England, he says, have also been putting in extra work on set pieces because of the number of goals that have been scored that way, not least the two for Harry Kane against Tunisia.

The first came from a Stones header and, given the amount of criticism he has faced, perhaps it is easy to understand why Pep Guardiola, in one press conference for City, described him as having “more balls than everybody in this room”. Stones puts it another way. “I’m a lot wiser,” he says.