Southgate calls for calm heads from England against Scotland
Phil Foden has been told that if he is going to become the England sensation he has so long promised to be, it will have to be the hard way. Opinion is divided on what his best position actually is. The player himself says he prefers more centrally and possibly deeper – a space where Jordan Henderson’s position is under threat with few other candidates.
Unfortunately some pretty powerful characters are aligned against him in holding this view. “But he doesn’t play there!” Gareth Southgate near-spluttered. Why, had the England manager been talking to Pep Guardiola. “Yes, yes,” Southgate added, hurrying the conversation along.
“He doesn’t play centrally for his club so presumably there is a reason for that,” he continued being careful not to share any confidences. “It depends on the level of the game, really. In the middle of the park, everyone wants to talk about the detail with the ball but there is a lot of detail without the ball.
“And in games at the weekend, you are playing opponents who are so clever with their passing and movement that you have to be spot on with pressing angles, your responsibilities and if you don’t, you don’t get the flow of the game. You’d have to speak to Pep, who is the best coach in the world, who plays him from wide.
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“He’s always got the freedom to drift if we play him wide. And that’s important.” Impressive performances against Seville and Newcastle were variations of the same theme, Southgate insisted, rather than a new position.
“He plays wide right and he drifted, with Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez as No 9 and No 10,” he explained. “He drifted in off the touchline with [Kyle] Walker going round him in possession. He definitely picked the ball up in those areas a lot but his start position was wide on the right.“
The trouble is, while we have waited for the star of England under-17 World Cup-winning success to burst through spectacularly onto the full international stage, he has instead found himself battling for oxygen in a congested area of the pitch for young Three Lions talent.
Southgate added: “He’s a player who has been with us from a young age and was on the team that won the under-17 World Cup but he’s battling against Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford and all of the other players we have in that area of the pitch for us.”
Not like Henderson is going to give up that deeper role without a fight anyway. “Jordan’s outputs on Saturday were the highest he has had at an England game,” Southgate said. “Obviously we have got good contacts at the club in Saudi Arabia so we have been monitoring his level. All of his data, he was hitting what he should have done.”
With Harry Maguire’s position also in danger of disappearing with the lack of top-level club football, Southgate could also make changes at the back with a view to giving more experience to a number of players with a place alongside up for grabs in Germany.
That said, after his attacking options failed to really click in Wroclaw against Ukraine, Southgate will be reluctant to make wholesale changes throughout the line-up.
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