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It is quite a sight to see Phil Foden playing through the middle, taking the ball on the half-turn, gliding past an opponent or two and slamming the ball into the net, the kind of thing he was doing for Manchester City while sweeping the individual awards last season.
He is a beautiful player to watch and it would feel like we as spectators are being deprived of something if England do not find a way to get him doing that sort of stuff during the European Championship which kicks off this weekend.
Former England captain and record goalscorer Wayne Rooney summed up the national mood ahead of the final pre-tournament warm-up game against Iceland on Friday: “(Real Madrid’s English midfielder) Jude Bellingham is great, but when you have a player like Phil Foden in the middle, you have to build the England team around him,” he said.
But the real beauty in Foden’s game, even if some see it as something that has held him back in recent years, is his versatility.
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The middle of the pitch is where Foden wants to play, something he readily admitted during last season, and it seems to be where he shines brightest, but he would surely be happy to move elsewhere if it meant there was a better balance to the England team. He has been doing that for years at City, and it might have to be the case again.
This is not a reaction to Foden’s subdued performance against Iceland — if we are judging players based on that game then manager Gareth Southgate would have had to come up with an almost entirely new team at a week’s notice. Only Trent Alexander-Arnold made a decent case for himself as England surprisingly lost 1-0 at Wembley.
The point is that we, as a nation, are once again focusing on building a team around a player rather than actually building a team.
As Rooney pointed out during his observation, Bellingham does exist. This is not that Bellingham is better than Foden necessarily, it is that Foden is the more versatile of the two, which means the best solution for England might not be to build the team around him, but to build a team where more of their quality players will find a natural home.
It is similar to a situation that frustrated many City fans during the season: in many games, Julian Alvarez played behind striker Erling Haaland, with Foden as a winger (usually on the City right). Alvarez did a good job centrally early in the season but faded in its second half, and there is no doubt that Foden’s best form came when starting through the middle.
Very few observers would have suggested at any point last season that Alvarez, a striker by trade, is the better attacking midfielder of the two, but the best way for the team to work was by moving Foden wide, because he can play there, and Alvarez cannot.
It meant that Alvarez got a long run in a role more suited to another player, but what was the outcome? City won anyway.
Not that England are as cohesive a side as City, but the point remains: the balance of the team has to take precedence over one particular player, especially when the player is just as capable of contributing elsewhere.
There is another relevant City example when it comes to Foden.
In 2020-21, his breakthrough season, he caught the eye playing on the left wing, running at opponents and scoring goals. The season after that, many suggested that he had regressed, but in reality he was just as important to the team overall, if not more so. He just did it as a very effective false nine, which requires a lot more subtlety and is not as glamorous.
Right-winger, left-winger or false nine, Foden has shown for years now that he can thrive when not playing in what might be deemed his best position.
Of course, he can pull the strings centrally, but the problem with the ‘Build the team around him’ talk is that, in this case, there is a very obvious drawback: what then happens with Bellingham.
There have been calls over the past two years to build the team around him, and given he just scored 23 goals in his debut season with Madrid, playing in advanced areas, he obviously commands a place in the England XI too.
If they could both play ahead of Declan Rice, with Bellingham being more defensively-minded, then that would be the ideal scenario, but it is not something Southgate has tried so far. And even then, there would be an element of sacrifice given Bellingham’s attacking output.
If there is one element of doubt about Foden’s game here, it is about how he fits into a midfield without proper defensive support behind him.
It was only about six months ago that Southgate was justifying his decision not to play Foden centrally by pointing to his lack of defensive acumen — which horrified the nation, only for City manager Pep Guardiola to agree with him.
Both men became more comfortable playing Foden centrally in the past few months and the results have been spectacular: not only was he scoring crucial (and often quality) goals, he had switched-on more defensively, too. He has improved in that regard, there is no doubt.
Phil Foden completes his hat-trick with an ice cold finish 🥶 pic.twitter.com/xyCyOa6yqR
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) February 5, 2024
But on Friday, Iceland’s winner came after he did not track a runner and the rest of England’s midfield did not spot the danger quickly enough.
“We’re all crying out for Gareth to take more risks with the team and play all these attacking players, but that’s the downside,” Rooney said at half-time, perhaps realising the issue with his earlier statement. “You see Iceland play one pass and it breaks the lines and then they run at the (England) back line. That’s the importance of having two holding players: against better teams that will happen more consistently.”
Foden could be the No 10 playing ahead of Rice and another holding midfielder, but moving Bellingham out of the team (or shifting him wide, which would be even worse) shows how silly the idea of building the team around a single player is.
England are better than Friday’s performance but it was clear even beforehand that there are question marks about the defence and the identity of Rice’s midfield partner, questions which would be objectively easier to find an answer to without trying to build it all around one player, no matter how good they are.
What those answers could be is another story.
It may well be that Foden finds a home on the left wing, where he has played many times for City, especially with no other obvious English candidate for the role and Bukayo Saka surely having the right side nailed down.
Foden played there at the very end of City’s season just gone in a different way to recent campaigns, because he had Josko Gvardiol providing the width, allowing him to come inside. Getting him in off the wing is another good solution, but Southgate is hardly blessed with left-back options.
Though Foden did take on a more prominent role in the City team in the final months of the season, the team was not built around him. That team is not built around anybody, which is the way it should be.
The England puzzle is difficult enough to piece together as it is, so why make it harder to try to get the best out of one player?
Foden is brilliant, and he could be set for a huge summer, but it does not have to be as the focal point of a team that has plenty else to consider.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Alex Nicodim/NurPhoto via Getty Images)