There is a question to be asked of Gareth Southgate that feels particularly relevant today if his intention is to convince us that England are not, as increasingly alleged, straying dangerously close to misusing one of their more talented footballers.
It relates to the player who makes Pep Guardiola’s eyes sparkle every time the conversation moves in his direction. The player in question has worn the colours of Manchester City with distinction. He is, in Guardiola’s words, “exceptional” and “unbelievable”, a four-time Premier League winner of such natural style and flair he gives the impression he must be on first-name terms with the ball.
So why the reluctance to trust Phil Foden in an England shirt and make him as important for the national team as he is for his club side? Why are England holding him back? Why is a player this supremely gifted not a mandatory first-team pick for his country?
This is not simply a knee-jerk reaction to England’s goalless draw against the USA and a performance that could be summed up by a statistic, midway through the second half, that Harry Kane had touched the ball more times in his own penalty area than his opponents’.
If anything, it is a question that could have been raised even before Friday’s game given that Foden had to wait until he was a two-time Premier League winner before being invited to make his first England appearance.
Usually, any English player who is having such a positive impact on a top tier Premier League team would be fast-tracked into the England squad. Not in this case, though. Foden had made his debut for City almost three years before his first appearance for England’s senior side.
At City, Guardiola will puff out his cheeks in admiration and tell us there are not enough superlatives to describe the boy’s talent. With England, it is different. Foden, it seems, has never been one of Southgate’s real favourites. He has never been the automatic go-to man when the team is lacking creativity.
They have been together, as coach and player, for two years, but there is still the distinct feeling that Southgate is experimenting with, rather than relying on, a player who has already achieved so much in his club career.
All of which can be perplexing, to say the least, when Foden is obviously a difference-maker.
“For Phil Foden not to be playing in an England XI is a real shame because he’s a massive talent,” Gary Neville, a television pundit who is usually supportive of Southgate’s choices, said during Friday’s coverage. “He’s our best player, our best talent, by a mile and he should be playing.”
Unfortunately for Foden, Southgate does not appear to be fully aligned to that way of thinking.
As it is, there have been only four occasions in Foden’s international career when he has played a full match. At the age of 22, Foden has accumulated 19 caps. Yet who could disagree with Neville when he said that, if Foden was from Spain rather than Stockport, it would have been considerably more?
“For me, his talent is huge,” said Neville. “I’ve not seen anything like that (in the USA game). I know we have (Jude) Bellingham, (Jack) Grealish and others. Gareth prefers (Mason) Mount, he prefers (Bukayo) Saka, he prefers (Raheem) Sterling. But for me… for Foden not to be in that starting XI – and he’s not come off the bench – was interesting.”
It is safe to assume that “interesting” in this context was a polite way of saying that Southgate was getting it badly wrong. Others will inevitably put it in blunter terms. Southgate is often characterised as being too conservative and, if there is a sense of deja vu here, it is because a lot of the same arguments were applied to Grealish’s absence for long periods of Euro 2020 last year.
Read More: Phil Foden is a generational talent – so why won’t Gareth Southgate play him?