Jack Wilshere has a crucial role as he makes his first start for England in the friendly match against Denmark on Wednesday night. Press Association

LONDON—The achievements of Jack Wilshere in professional football don't read like those of a superstar. He's played fewer than 50 first-team games and has scored just three goals.

But Mr. Wilshere also happens to be a promising young player born in England, and in this football-crazed country, those ingredients are enough to generate a peculiar kind of hysteria.

As he prepares to make his first start for England in an exhibition game against Denmark on Wednesday night, this 19-year-old kid is being hailed as the most exciting creative talent in a generation, a potential world-beater and—just maybe—the man to end this country's 45-year record of misery in major tournaments.

"He's destined for greatness," said Owen Coyle, the Bolton Wanderers head coach who signed Mr. Wilshere on loan last season. "He's a total footballer—everything he does oozes class."

But anyone tuning in to Wednesday night's game expecting to witness a display of ball-juggling brilliance or to catch a glimpse of another lightning fast forward with laser-accurate shooting will be disappointed. That's because English football's latest teenage superstar has been picked in a role that basically requires him to be invisible.

"He will play in front of the back four," Fabio Capello, the England head coach, told reporters last month. "It is not the position he prefers. He prefers to go forward. But one of the midfielders has to stay back."

Insiders have a term for this kind of midfield role: The anchorman. It's an uncomplicated, unglamorous job that deploys a midfielder deep in his own half with strict instructions to stay there. His task is to break up opposition attacks, shield the defense and shift the ball to more gifted teammates. In other words, to do all the dirty work and get none of the glory.

"It's the ticking position—as in keeping everything ticking over," said Jamie Redknapp, the former Liverpool midfielder and now a football analyst for Sky Sports.

In English football, the holding midfield role has long been seen as the exclusive preserve of workaday veterans or scrappy upstarts—individuals who are happy to go about their business unnoticed and get out of the way of the guys with greater talent, quicker feet and bigger paychecks.

Paul Lambert is one of the few British players to have made a name for himself in the role, although he had to venture abroad to gain recognition: The Scotland player was the anchor for Germany's Borussia Dortmund when the club won the Champions League in 1997.

"[European countries] have always looked on the role as vital but few people here at that time understood it," said Mr. Lambert, now head coach of Norwich City. "If you weren't nutmegging people, scoring from 40 yards or flying into tackles, why were you in midfield?"

But that attitude is changing. By handing the holding role to a rare talent like Mr. Wilshere, some people say England is finally waking up to one of the modern game's fundamental philosophies: These oft-overlooked players quietly hold winning teams together.

Analysts from UEFA, European football's governing body, highlighted the growing importance of the anchorman role in a report on last year's Champions League. "Every one of the 16 teams from last season's knockout phase employed at least one midfield screen player who could counteract the fast break," the report read.

These days, one often isn't enough at the highest level. Last summer's World Cup in South Africa was dominated by teams built around two shielding players: Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets for Spain, Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong for the Netherlands, and Bastian Schweinsteiger and Sami Khedria for Germany. No team without two such players got beyond the last eight.

"There's such an emphasis on the counter-attack now, you need that protection in front of the back four," said John Barnes, the former Liverpool and England midfielder. "Look at England—they got knocked out [by Germany] because they didn't keep their shape."

Specifically, Mr. Wilshere is viewed as the solution to a tactical dilemma that has taxed successive England managers for the best part of a decade: How to accommodate three of the world's finest attacking players in the same team.

In Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney, England possesses a trio of offensive players who have terrorized elite defenses for years and boast a combined 68 goals in the Champions League. For all their qualities, however, they suffer from one limitation—they all do pretty much the same thing, occupying the space between midfield and attack and blasting rockets at goal.

The result when all three play in a conventional 4-4-2 formation is that the center of the field is congested, while fielding three attack-minded players also means huge gaps open in front of the England back four. (It was from this space that Germany's Mesut Özil tore England to shreds in South Africa.)

Which is where Mr. Wilshere comes in. His inclusion as a defensive ballast is designed to liberate the country's three match-winners, giving Messrs. Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney license to roam forwards, finding space, not traffic.

But today's ball-winners are not only key defensively, as the shield against the counter-attack, but also crucial to a team's offensive gameplan. They don't just have a good nose for danger, but an awareness of space and an uncanny feel for the geometry of a football field. Having won the ball, they use it quickly and shrewdly, using the tempo and angle of short passes to set up attacks.

"It can be the best position on the pitch," said Mr. Redknapp. "You are the spare man, like a sweeper in front of the defense, and when it's going well the ball is like a magnet to your foot. Get it, pass it—everything has to come through you. There is time and space and you can run the game."

It's a role for which Mr. Wilshere is almost uniquely qualified. According to Opta Sports, a statistics provider, only two English midfielders—Manchester United's Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes—have a superior pass success rate than Mr. Wilshere's 86.7% in the Premier League this season—and Mr. Wilshere has attempted more passes than both players.

Still, there are those who question whether deploying Mr. Wilshere in a deep-lying holding role is making adequate use of such a rare talent. To be sure, keeping the opposition's most dangerous player in check requires intelligence, but not imagination or invention. In comparison to goal scoring or creating, holding midfield is a pretty straightforward discipline.

"In Jack Wilshere, you're talking about someone who has the ability to unlock defenses, to take people on or play that killer ball that leads to a chance," said Tony Cottee, a football analyst.

Write to Jonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com