Phil Foden celebrates his spectacular goal Real Madrid where he underlined his central role within his team.Photo: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images" src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/pHp1Kie9VtApjgtOWy.CsA-/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU3Ng-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/theguardian_763/877cb0a6de3ae4814f97 92eb486880e8″ data src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/pHp1Kie9VtApjgtOWy.CsA-/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU3Ng-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/theguardian_763/877cb0a6de3ae4814f979 2eb486880e8″/>
If you weren't an experienced Pep Guardiola watcher, you might have assumed there was something seriously wrong with Phil Foden's spectacular goal at the Bernabéu on Tuesday night. Jabbing his fingers, his face full of aggression, Guardiola walked onto the pitch and grabbed Foden's face so forcefully that he not only flattened Foden's cheeks but also made his ears flap. But that's just Guardiola showing affection.
Maybe it's because he sees something of himself in Foden. Johan Cruyff would tell the story of looking for a technically skilled midfielder in Barcelona's reserves in 1990. "They told me this boy Pep was the best, so I looked for him in the B team, but he didn't play. I looked for him in the youth team, but he didn't play. Eventually I found him in the third team. I said to the coaches, 'You said he was the best?!' And they said, 'Yes, but physically...' And I said, 'He will grow.'" Citing the mantra that if you're good enough, you're big enough, Cruyff recruited Guardiola to the first team and made him the crucial player of the team that won four consecutive La Liga titles and the 1992 European Cup.
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Foden can agree with this, according to Mark Allen, who was Manchester City's academy director during the player's formative years. "Phil wasn't the greatest," Allen said. "Physically there was no way he could compete. But he was smart enough to work around that. His frustration came when he saw players in his group being promoted to older groups. Although he had the ability to do that, it was not wise or wise to put him in overage groups where it was significantly more physical. I have had several conversations with him about this."
Never the ugly duckling - he was always a protégé and won the Ballon d'Or in England's World Cup-winning Under-17 team - Foden has nevertheless evolved rather than bursting onto the scene fully formed like Wayne Rooney. He got to this point slower than his Tuesday night opponent, Jude Bellingham, whom he overshadowed.
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At 23 years old, Foden is the outstanding player in what is arguably the best team in the world. As player of the match against Real Madrid, he received 7/10 from L'Équipe, a rare honor where the marks in the famously stingy French newspaper rarely exceed six.
As well as being held back when peers were promoted to higher age groups, there was the whole question of whether Guardiola would ever trust him in a midfield with David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. Playing time was initially limited and it seemed he was the academy player swamped by expensive imports, but when David Silva left in 2020 his moment had come.
A giant leap forward came during lockdown when Foden, guided by his advisor Owen Brown, teamed up with Liverpool Harriers athletics coach Tony Clarke, first on the track and then, as restrictions tightened, in Foden's backyard. "We were working on his gait and trying to get him to understand acceleration," Clarke said. "Usain Bolt only reaches his top speed 40 meters into the race. But a football player doesn't often run 40 meters. Sprinting has three phases: acceleration, transition and flight, but football players should mainly be in the acceleration phase. Phil went straight into flight mode and overshot. He skipped the acceleration and transition. So we worked on the first six to eight steps: head down, knee up, hip down, that's where all the power comes from."
However, sprint training for footballers is very different to that for Bolt, which takes into account quick changes of direction and the fact that no 6-foot-1, 13-stone defender is going to try to take you out in the Olympic 100-meter final. By focusing on his initial foot position and change of direction, his times improved significantly over five meters, as did his range of motion. At the World Cup in Qatar he was England's third fastest player, behind only Kyle Walker and Marcus Rashford.
As lockdown restrictions eased, Foden and Clarke moved to Macclesfield Municipal Athletics Track, an inconspicuous spot on the edge of the city, a long way in glamor from the Bernabéu. Here he was introduced to Clarke's fartlek sessions, the word meaning speed play in Swedish, a form of running that was developed in Scandinavia in the 1930s and evolved into modern interval training. Two x 90 seconds, four x 60 seconds, four x 30 seconds and four x 15 seconds were a typical session.
Foden told friends he felt "like a rocket" and was as fit as he had ever been. "The word came out of training that he was in incredible shape," said Clarke.
A 4-1 win against Liverpool in February 2021, in which Foden shone as player of the match and scored a spectacular goal, made outsiders take notice. Barney Ronay wrote on these pages: "Stop watching Foden's exciting, high-quality goal for a moment and focus instead on his surging run to score the goal that broke this match open." Jamie Carragher, who runs in the same circles as Clarke, told Sky that Foden had worked with an athletics coach. Since then, Clarke has been inundated with footballers, working with Tottenham and the Lionesses' Grace Clinton and Liverpool's Missy Bo Kearns.
Foden was still the wide attacking player and did not rely, as he did at the Bernabeu, on being in the centre. In May 2022, Guardiola said: "With time he can play centrally, but at the moment he is best suited on the wings. [In the central positions] there must be pause." Guardiola's Spanish word conjures up the image of David Silva floating over the ball before providing a perfect assist for Sergio Aguero. Lionel Messi was always fast, but was even better at slowing down so quickly that a defender would run aimlessly into the distance. Foden has been dubbed the Stockport Iniesta by City fans, but the Barça midfielder who inspired the name also had the ability to slow down the game; Foden has always been fuller.
"It's because he's from Edgeley," says a friend, speaking of the suburb of Stockport where Foden grew up. "Although he is a product of the academy, he is also the last street footballer." Foden will show you the concrete playground next to the bookmakers where, as an underdeveloped eight-year-old, he played the games of his childhood and competed with older cousins and teenagers. They were more bollards than goalpost jumpers, but nonetheless an old-fashioned development plan that looked more like the 1950s than the 1920s, instilling the aggression needed to play with older boys and the 100mph style of a box-to-box player. Until recently he still enjoyed kickabouts.
It's difficult to finesse an English footballer built this way, but Guardiola seems to have succeeded; the executive functions of Foden's football brain are coming more and more to life. You can also see how much he is now enjoying taking on the goal-scoring responsibilities: Tuesday's equalizer was the fourth time he has attempted a long-range shot in a 15-minute period.
For now, Foden may be rested against Luton on Saturday, ready to resume the England number 10's battle against Bellingham and Real Madrid on Wednesday, although De Bruyne will also be considered for the role. Not so long ago, England would bemoan the lack of creative, technical players. Now they somehow have too many, all of whom will need to be squeezed into the Euro 2024 starting XI this summer. And both Bellingham and Foden have legitimate claims of being the best players in their respective leagues at the moment.
