Everything is happening in a hurry for Jesse Lingard. First picked in a Manchester United matchday squad by Sir Alex Ferguson at the age of 18, he waited nearly three more years to make his debut, which was curtailed by injury after 24 minutes, and was a couple of months short of his 23rd birthday before he made a second first‑team appearance for United. Those four years brought four loan spells and enormous uncertainty about his future at the club of his childhood dreams – but then the doors started to open. And they kept opening.

Within a year of that second match he had played 46 more, scored an extra-time winner in the FA Cup final against Crystal Palace and another goal on his return to Wembley for the Community Shield, and made his full international debut. Now he has played in four of England’s past five games (he was an unused substitute in the other) and is expected to win a fifth cap against Lithuania on Sunday afternoon. He says of footballing success that “it can come quick, but other times you’ve got to be patient and wait for your chance” and it is a lesson borne of personal experience. “Marcus [Rashford] got straight in and then stayed there,” he says of his friend and team‑mate. “Others like myself had to take the long route.”

Like his career, his body also grew slowly. Coming through at United he played with younger age groups because he was not tall or strong enough to compete with his contemporaries. He remains slender and, at 5ft 9in, short for a professional footballer, but that stature no longer holds him back.

Last year he described himself as “pretty much fearless” and he showed as much against Slovenia in October, his second England outing, when he threw himself at the 6ft 2in Aljaz Struna after the defender had pushed Rashford in the neck. “You’ve got to look after each other,” Lingard says. “You come on trips like this, we team-bond and get to know each other and it’s like family. We’re not going to let another team bully us or be tougher than us.”

Lingard was part of United’s FA Youth Cup-winning side of 2011, alongside Paul Pogba and Michael Keane, now at Burnley, who made his own England debut against Germany on Wednesday. “It’s great for Mike,” he says. “I knew his love for Manchester United growing up, and then he had to move on and get out of his comfort zone, but he’s done it pretty well.”

There were times when Lingard felt that he, too, would have to leave Old Trafford in search of opportunity, particularly after his United debut in August 2014 was followed by injury, six months on the fringes and then a fourth loan spell.

“About the time I went to Derby on loan I was thinking about it,” he says. “That year had to be a make‑or‑break season because I couldn’t play reserve football any more. I had to be playing against grown men and learning the game and getting that experience. So at the start of the season after Derby I didn’t play and I was so conscious: what shall I do? What shall I do? I spoke to my family and we made a decision.”

In October 2015, he replaced Juan Mata at half-time of a game at Everton, and everything changed. He became one of several emerging players to profit from Louis van Gaal’s willingness to trust young talent and Gareth Southgate is bringing a similar approach to the England side.

“Now we start from scratch,” he says when asked about the team’s long history of major-tournament failures. “We’ve got a young squad, a young manager, and for us as a young group we’ve got to pull together with the talent we’ve got and make the most of it.

“We played well against Spain, we competed against Germany and we beat France, so we’re up there now, and when it comes to a tournament we’ll be on it. With the talent we’ve got in the squad, we can do damage in the game.”

On the subject of damage, Lingard’s video footage of United’s team bus being attacked by West Ham fans as it arrived at Upton Park last May became one of several contributions to social media that became viral sensations.

When, in February, Pogba posted footage on Instagram of he and Lingard dancing in the dressing room, Rio Ferdinand criticised it, saying: “Until you’ve won something you can’t go out and do stuff like that.” (Lingard’s elder brother, Louie Scott, runs a dance school in Thessaloniki and the player says his parents are both good dancers and that moves “just come natural”.) Ferdinand has since reconsidered and phoned both players to apologise.

“Fun plays a massive part in anyone’s life,” Lingard says. “I’m the type of guy that’s always having a joke, messing around but also when it comes to the serious stuff, you know, your head’s on the game.

“You train hard all week and in your downtime you can relax with your friends and have fun. Nowadays the papers pick up on it quick, and you can be quick to be judged, but you can’t really judge anyone unless you can meet them in real life. We’re happy‑go‑lucky people and we do what makes us happy.”

When you have overcome uncertainty to also make many other people happy, with their number including the managers of the national team and the nation’s most successful club, a little jig is perhaps understandable.