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"From the outside, it seems crazy," Jarell Quansah remarks, as he looks back on his recent summer, when rapid transformation felt like a constant. "But it is one of them ... football is a unpredictable game."

A Quick Recap

Days after winning the U21 European Championship with England at the conclusion of June, Quansah decided to leave Liverpool, to join the Bundesliga side in a multi-million pound transfer.

The significant transfer sum brought big pressure as the young defender was tasked with settling in in a new country and at a club where the churn was dramatic. Erik ten Hag had stepped in to replace Xabi Alonso and a number of key players were gone or going – chief among them Florian Wirtz, key squad members, Jeremie Frimpong, Amine Adli, Granit Xhaka, established players and Jonathan Tah.

League Introduction

Quansah's first league appearance came on 23 August at home to their opponents and the central defender found the net after the opening minutes, though the achievement was undercut by tragedy. All he could think about was Diogo Jota, who was killed in a car accident. Quansah executed Jota's gamer celebration as a tribute.

"Scoring on your first Bundesliga match, at home, after the opening moments, is definitely a whirlwind," Quansah states. "However, my dominant emotion was that it was a homage to Diogo."

Early Challenges

The defender could have been forgiven for wondering what he had committed to at Leverkusen. From the promising start in their first league game, they succumbed to a narrow loss and the following game on 30 August was just as bad. The squad squandered comfortable advantages to draw 3-3 at 10-man Werder Bremen, the equaliser coming in stoppage time. It was no longer his responsibility for very long. He was sacked on September 1st.

Maintaining Composure

Quansah doesn't appear to be the type to fret. If calmness defines his game, it was evident during the conversation he gave after joining England for the Wembley friendly against Wales and the qualifying match against their next opponents.

Quansah has remained focused under the new Leverkusen manager, Kasper Hjulmand, and persisted in doing what he always intended to do at the club – play. The new manager has brought stability. His team have positive results in their domestic campaign along with ties in each of their Champions League ties. But there is a broader statistic that encourages Quansah, even bringing a measure of vindication. It is the fact that demonstrates he has played every minute of the team's season.

International Recognition

It is one that Thomas Tuchel has observed. The England head coach was a admirer previously, selecting Quansah when he named his first squad. After omitting him in June so that Quansah could focus on the youth tournament, he provided him with a late call-up in September when John Stones was forced to withdraw.

Yet to earn his first cap, Quansah must have done something right in training and around the camp because he was named at the outset in Tuchel's 24‑man group for the upcoming matches, essentially as a fifth centre-back with the regular starter returning. The aspiration is a first appearance. It is another thing he would surely handle with ease.

Career Choices

"With my new club, the club were keen on signing me for a while and that's not just from the manager [Ten Hag]," Quansah says. "They were interested prior to his arrival. So knowing it was a type of organizational choice and things would remain consistent with which manager was to come in ... it was easy for me to choose this path.

"There were a lot of players leaving and it's consistently challenging when you lose key players. It has been difficult to build the leadership groups but the outcomes we have had [under Hjulmand] demonstrate that we have developed a good squad with quality players. It is requiring patience to build and we are still progressing. But if we are getting results and not losing that is a good place to start."

Liverpool Departure

It had to have been a wrench for Quansah to depart from Liverpool, his team since childhood, where he experienced so many memorable moments – such as the Carabao Cup final victory over their London rivals in the previous season when he was introduced as an late replacement.

Quansah was also involved in last season's Premier League title triumph. Yet his perspective of most of that achievement was not the perspective he would have chosen. He was an unused substitute on multiple matches in the competition, his limited playing time falling short compared to his statistics from 2023‑24 when he featured more regularly.

Career Development

"I've always learned off top-level professionals around me at my former club and it's been incredibly beneficial for my professional development," he says. "However, for a developing defender, you require match experience and I'm will require hundreds of games to be where I want to be.

"My primary desire was game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, it's not guaranteed because there are world-class players throughout the squad. I wanted an environment where they can have confidence that I could errors at times but they will look under that and see I can keep pushing and improving."

Early Experience

Quansah remembers his loan to the lower division club in the later part of that season where he made his first senior appearances – multiple matches, to be precise. There were "multiple reality checks", he says with a grin, starting with his first game; a 5-1 defeat at their opponents.

"That represented a genuine revelation," Quansah says. "It proved a really valuable part of my career because I wanted to make the subsequent progression to playing first-team football. Each match I learned something new. That's where I understood how crucial practical knowledge and match practice was. You could say it informed my choice in the off-season."