‘I didn’t think I’d be saying we can reach a World Cup final’
Freddie Woodman tells Sam Wallace about the England Under-20s’ South Korean adventure
The last England Under-20s team to reach a World Cup semi-final did so long before the current side were born but this afternoon, 5,600 miles away in the South Korean city of Jeonju, the new generation, including goalkeeper Freddie Woodman, hope to go one better.
The Under-20s have progressed to a semi-final against Italy, ending a long trail of tears for England at this level where, in the previous 11 tournaments, they had failed to qualify for five and not won a game in the other six. It was 1993 when the likes of Nicky Butt, Nick Barmby and Jamie Pollock reached the semi-finals of the World Youth Championships in Tunisia, around four years before any of the current side were born.
Woodman, 20, who is yet to play for his parent club, Newcastle United, comes from a family of some football pedigree: his father, Andy, was once a well-travelled lower-league goalkeeper and the best friend of Gareth Southgate, whom he met when they were apprentices at Crystal Palace.
Southgate is godfather to Freddie, born in 1997, by which time the two friends’ career paths had long since diverged: Andy was at Northampton Town, the current England manager at Aston Villa.
Freddie is treading a familiar path for a young English prodigy, capped all the way up the junior levels from under-16s and making his name on loan at Hartlepool, Crawley Town and Kilmarnock. Yesterday, he said that the tournament had come at the right time for a group of players who knew each other well.
“It’s exciting for us – we are in unknown territory, the semifinal of a World Cup and the chance to get in a final, which I didn’t think I would be saying.”
He was part of the England Under-17s who won the 2014 European Championship, and many of the squad have stayed together, including Dominic Solanke, Liverpool’s new signing from Chelsea who scored the winner against Mexico in the quarterfinals. Woodman reels off a few more from that under-17s team, including Newcastle team-mate Adam Armstrong and Dael Fry, Lewis Cook and Jonjoe Kenny.
Woodman has learnt from his loan spells and has had the guidance of his father. For a while, he was his coach at Newcastle, whom he joined at 14 when Andy was on Alan Pardew’s staff. With Southgate in 2004, Andy wrote a dual memoir about their respective careers Woody and Nord, A Football Friendship, ‘Nord’ being Southgate’s nickname as a player.
It is an affecting story encompassing the fun, the triumphs and the disappointments. Freddie chuckles at mention of the book and says that, yes, he has read it. His earliest memory is as a five-year-old in 2003 watching his father playing for Oxford against Arsenal in the FA Cup third round. “It was quite strange seeing my old man on the pitch with Henry and Bergkamp.
“The way it panned out for him wasn’t ideal and he had a lot of struggles along the way that I have been fortunate to learn from. He openly admits mistakes and he tells them to me so I won’t make the
same. But he does remind me that he’s got 500 league games! I’m on 25, so it’s quite competitive in my household.”
As for Freddie’s godfather, he says he is sure that Southgate remembered his birthday every year. Do his team-mates know? “Not really.” The England manager will be watching today, when England Under-20s have a chance to make history. What does Freddie think of the prospects for his generation in the ultra-competitive Premier League? “There is a lot of quality in this team and most of the players here will go on to do good things. That’s all any young player wants, that opportunity to show everyone what he is about, and I think our chance might come this week.”