Every so often one or two of the most promising teenagers in Newcastle’s academy are invited to train with Eddie Howe’s first-team squad. The experience is partly a reward and partly an introduction to the formidable challenges involved in becoming an elite footballer. Not too many youngsters are invited back on a regular basis.
Lewis Miley is a rare exception. The midfielder was only 16 and a few months out of school when he received the summons from Howe last year.
“The biggest compliment I can give Lewis is that, straight away, he looked like part of the group,” said Newcastle’s manager. “For someone so young to survive, technically, within the first-team group is no mean feat. Some of the drills we do are very difficult. Lewis survived in those drills; that’s a very big thing.”
By way of context, Newcastle’s outstanding England Under-21 winger Anthony Gordon recently admitted it took him several months to properly fathom Howe’s complex tactical instruction and that, after arriving from Everton last January, he “couldn’t always understand” precisely what he was supposed to be doing.
No wonder Howe was struck by what he describes as Miley’s “brilliant brain” and promptly booked a midfielder who joined Newcastle’s academy at the age of seven on the first team’s trip to Saudi Arabia for warm-weather training last December.
Around the time Miley was playing in a friendly against Al-Hilal in Riyadh, Enzo Fernández was helping to switch the lights on for Argentina in Doha. Six hours drive east across the desert, last winter’s World Cup showcased the then 21-year-old midfielder’s skills. After playing a key role in his country’s tournament win, Fernández was voted the best young player of Qatar 2022 before joining Chelsea from Benfica for £106.8m the following month.
Yet fast forward to July in Atlanta, Georgia, and Miley eclipsed Fernández during a friendly against Chelsea. Given that something very similar would happen last Saturday as Mauricio Pochettino’s side surrendered 4-1 on Tyneside, Howe was evidently right to change his mind sending the now 17-year-old out on loan to a Football League club last summer.
When he discussed that decision with his staff there was no discord, merely jokes about their collective uncertainty as to whether the 6ft 2in, startlingly baby-faced prodigy had started shaving. Everyone agreed Miley was “some boy”.
Nonetheless, only four months ago his chances of getting much game time this season looked slim. Shortly before the North American trip Italy’s Sandro Tonali had arrived for £55m from Milan and Miley looked out of Howe’s immediate midfield equation with Bruno Guimarães, Sean Longstaff, Joelinton, Joe Willock and Elliot Anderson ahead of him in the departmental roster.
Moreover despite making his first senior competitive start in a Carabao Cup win over Manchester City in September, a player currently deployed as a No 8 but expected to morph into a No 6 subsequently contracted glandular fever and did not play again until November.
By then Tonali had been suspended for 10 months after breaches of betting regulations, Anderson, Willock and Longstaff were injured and Miley strode, unfazed, into the limelight.
As his cleverly disguised, beautifully weighted, pass created Alexander Isak’s opening goal against Chelsea a star was born. Fernández certainly failed to relish the renewal of his acquaintance with a midfielder who, as Howe puts it, “doesn’t look 17, doesn’t act 17 and doesn’t play 17”.
After another stellar performance during Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at the Parc des Princes – where Miley became the third-youngest Englishman after Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden to start a Champions League match – Paris Saint-Germain’s players are unlikely to disagree.
It was thrilling to behold Miley displaying a 30-year-old’s nous yet playing with the fearless freedom of a child and Howe’s pride was reinforced by the knowledge that such exceptional talent is leavened by healthy humility and rare emotional maturity.
Miley grew up as one of four brothers in what his manager terms an “exceptionally good, extremely sensible” family from the small former colliery County Durham hill town of Stanley. An older and younger sibling are also on Newcastle’s books, Jamie with the under-21s and Mason the under-18s.
Perhaps significantly, as a pupil at Tanfield School, Lewis spent long hours honing his close control and first touch playing in his year group’s local title-winning futsal team. Those attributes should be on show if, as expected, he makes his sixth appearance of the season at home to Manchester United on Saturday night.
“The future will be the judge for Lewis but he’s had an early taste of high-level football and taken everything in his stride,” said Howe on Friday. “For someone so young he’s got a good perspective on life and sport. He’s very calm, very polite, very respectful. But he’s also keen to show his qualities.”
