Phil Foden has something that no other England player ever has before. It’s not the passing range, the half-turn, even the Pep Guardiola education from such a young age. It’s the clamour for him to make a difference, despite him already being in the starting XI.
You know the drill now, right? Whoever’s left on the bench is always the key to all of England’s problems (see Jack Grealish in 2021, Foden himself in 2022), as pundits do Gareth Southgate’s job for him. Yet despite Premier League Player of the Year Foden starting the tournament, there’s still clamour for him to not just play but for him to be the king and courtroom of the Three Lions’ summer.
“We need to find a way to get the best out of him,” Micah Richards cried after the 1-0 win over Serbia, calling for him to have a freer role. “We can’t make the same mistakes with Foden that we did with Paul Scholes,” Gary Neville warned ahead of Euro 2024, insisting that the Manchester City man should be playing centrally. Scholes himself reckons Foden will “win you games”.
Am I missing something? Seriously?
I believe it was Johan Cruyff who said something along the lines of football being a simple game – but simple football being the hardest thing there is. This might be the only time this summer that you’ll see the Dutch great’s name in the same sentence as Southgate’s – but the England boss was onto something when he kept things straightforward and selected players based on who fitted each role.
He always picked profile over personality. None of this Gerrard/Lampard nonsense: Jordan Henderson was boring but effective in midfield. Harry Maguire at the back, despite the temptation to slot in more popular centre-backs. Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling wide, however flashy the likes of Jadon Sancho and Jack Grealish were.
Yet somewhere down the line, Southgate went all Harvey Dent and forgot his core beliefs. A frontline of Foden, Saka and Kane, with Bellingham behind, may be an A-list option: but it has no runner. They all want the ball to feet. No one to stretch a defence.
It means that England are playing in front of every defence they face and never behind. It means that a team like Serbia can pen England in, Pickford lumping the ball up to Kane with no threat of the captain playing in either of the wingers beside him, because there’s no threat on the counter.
So since Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling aren’t in the squad, you need either Anthony Gordon or Ollie Watkins in there. You’re not dropping Kane, despite BBC pundits turning on him at half-time against Denmark. Saka is England Men’s Player of the Year for the past two years. Bellingham has transformed the press and has been fantastic for England since his introduction. Foden, meanwhile, has been patchy at best for England. It shouldn’t have to be any more difficult than that.
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Trent Alexander-Arnold was never granted column inches or post-match analyses on how England could have built the team around him (and it was much easier to do so, given the presence of Henderson). Yet there’s an incessant rewriting of what Foden does, what he can do and what he should do for England.
The idea that he should be England’s most important player is just that: an idea. He never has been – and it takes moving everyone else around (taking Bellingham out of his best position, perhaps Saka, too, asking Kane to work for Foden rather than the other way around), just to make it happen. To paraphrase Jesse Eisenberg’s character in The Social Network, if Foden was England’s best player… he’d have been England’s best player any time you’ve seen him in the past four years.
Do any of these pundits actually watch Foden? He isn’t a player you give a ‘free role’ to: he’s a master of adapting his game based on the mission, with Guardiola tasking him with whatever’s needed, not just handing him the keys to the machine. When he’s played on the left for City, actually, he’s been a touchline winger: not cutting inside – and especially not with a right-footed left-back behind him.
He doesn’t playmake like De Bruyne, anyway: he receives, turns (better than pretty much anyone in the world, may I add), carries the ball, and shoots. Do England need that so badly that it’s worth disrupting the balance? No. They need a runner. The question should be which of Foden, Saka or Cole Palmer you pick, alongside Bellingham and Kane: not how you get two of the three in your team and simply get by without the all-important pace in behind.
In fact, I’m beginning to question why there’s such a clamour to build around Foden, at all. Is it for England’s benefit, exactly? Or is it for Phil Foden’s? Spain are leaving Dani Olmo and Ferran Torres out for Fabian Ruiz. Germany are leaving Leroy Sane on the bench and playing Robin Andrich. Did we learn nothing from the Golden Generation? It really is English arrogance to rock up with two No.10s and no sense of balance – just because they both had really good seasons – and expect to steamroll your group.
Time and again though, England fans, pundits and would-be managers bend over backwards trying to get all their favourites in the one XI. I love Foden. He may well have been the best player in the world last season. But history is littered with all-time greats who had to sit on the bench: including Foden in City’s Treble-winning season. Is it just me? Or is it obvious that he has to sit out again?
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