England should build a team around Phil Foden. Gareth Southgate doesn’t play him in the same role as Pep Guardiola. Foden’s best position is No 10. England haven’t got the best out of him.
There are variants on a theme but common denominators to the discussions around Foden. One game against Serbia – and one match of tournament football is often a time when premature conclusions about England are drawn – with no Foden shots, and an underwhelming performance, flagged them up. And yet there are answers; some ignored, some inconvenient, some merely recognition of realities.
England could build a team around Foden. But they cannot simultaneously build one around Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane and Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice. In any case, the Real Madrid team is not built around Bellingham, but built with him. The Manchester City team is not built around Foden; sometimes his position shifts according to whether Kevin De Bruyne is fit, or according to whether Guardiola wants the security of an extra central midfielder, such as Mateo Kovacic, or the width of a specialist winger, like Jack Grealish or Jeremy Doku.
Southgate fielded Foden on the left against Serbia. It is not the position he has occupied most frequently for City this season – he has made more appearances in a central role and some off the right – but nor is it unfamiliar. He scored twice against Brighton in April when the nominal left winger.
Foden’s preference for playing as a 10 is well known. It is not always granted, however. His 27-goal season for City, his Footballer-of-the-Year campaign came when he was shunted around the side; because of injuries, because of tactics, because Guardiola is reluctant to use both Foden and De Bruyne in the middle against elite opponents. It was not necessary to put him in his favourite spot.
But, with four goals in 35 international caps – in contrast, his last 35 City appearances have produced 22 goals – it is undeniable that Foden is yet to exert the same impact in an England shirt; not regularly, anyway. If there are certain similarities with Bellingham’s record – four in 30 caps – the younger man had the goal and the starring role against Serbia. Prodigies have similarities and differences: each seen as a midfielder upon his emergence, now they have gravitated towards the final third. Maybe it is a recognition that if players have the ability to score goals in considerable quantities, it can be a false economy to deploy them elsewhere.
That they are the respective players of the year in Spain and England can lend itself to lazy assertions that England should be favourites to win Euro 2024; but if many of the discussions around England often have a simplistic element, football is about more than simply selecting 11 very good players. If the Golden Generation taught England nothing else, that is a lesson they should have learned. None of which necessarily makes Foden and Bellingham the Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard of the 2020s: too good to be omitted, but incompatible.
That, as a No 10, Bellingham is likelier to drift left than right means he and Foden run the risk of crowding each other, of popping up in the same pockets. Southgate’s explanation of the situation is nuanced, ill-suited to the more extreme statements that populate the opening paragraph and which can dominate the debate. “It’s about where they end up with the ball, about them having the freedom to go where they want with the ball – in the areas where they can do the most damage and be at their most productive,” he said earlier this week. There is some freedom to interchange, a recognition that Bellingham sometimes defends on the left wing for Real. It is less about where players start, more where they finish in a move.
All of which requires chemistry. Bellingham missed England’s two friendlies earlier this month and their two games in November. He and Foden have only started five times together since the end of the World Cup: one each in September and October, two in March and then Serbia. It is understandable if they are not completely on the same wavelength yet.
Just as it is if England are a little lopsided. Saka offers genuine width on the right. Foden does not on the left. For City, there were times when he used to be a touchline-hugging winger, primed to run in defences – as James Milner can testify from outings at right-back for Liverpool, sprinting against a man 14 years his junior – but now, whatever his starting berth, he ends up further infield, giving him more chance to shoot from the edge of the box. As a pseudo left winger, Foden may now need an attacking left-back to overlap outside him. It meant the reinvented Josko Gvardiol could suit him for City; it means Luke Shaw’s absence for England comes at a further cost.
The nature of international management, as Southgate realises, entails trying to find ways to get talents into the team and to coexist and complement players who sometimes want similar roles. For Foden, like Trent Alexander-Arnold, one game did not reveal a magic formula. But nor did it prove an idea should be jettisoned already.
