Phil Foden is the clear issue that England have - so why hasn't anyone else seemed to notice?
Phil Foden reacts during the group stage match between Serbia and England(Image credit: Matt McNulty - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
It seems cruel to blame Phil Foden for the England performance against Slovakia. But it was fitting that as soon as he was taken off, some 95 miserable minutes into the action, the Three Lions put the ball in the back of the net.
Usually, it's a player on the bench that everyone has a clamour for – whether that's Jack Grealish in 2021 or Foden himself in 2022. Yet it seems like everyone has a clamour for Foden to be the difference-maker again this year, despite the Player of the Year starting every game so far. He's the catalyst. He's the main man. He's the one player that pundits are pointing to as England's star player. Unlock Foden, and it'll all click, they say.
“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”.
Bizarrely, pundits were quicker to call for Kane to be dropped than Foden (Image credit: Getty Images)
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.
Southgate has a simple decision to make… so why isn't he making it? (Image credit: Getty Images)
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.
Pep Guardiola built a very specific role for Foden – Southgate hasn't (Image credit: Getty Images)
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 one of Leroy Sane or Florian Wirtz 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?
Mark White is the Digital Content Editor at FourFourTwo. During his time on the brand, Mark has written three cover features on Mikel Arteta, Martin Odegaard and the Invincibles, and has written pieces on subjects ranging from Sir Bobby Robson’s time at Barcelona to the career of Robinho. An encyclopedia of football trivia and collector of shirts, he first joined the team back in 2020 as a staff writer.
