PHIL FODEN EXCLUSIVE
BOY WONDER CLIMBING TO THE TOP WITH CITY
‘Dad is a United fan. He’s finding it difficult this year’
WHEN Manchester City won the Premier League last season, captain Vincent Kompany called up Phil Foden and told him to come to the pub.
It turned out to be a big night in Hale, but while Kompany and John Stones sang and danced with supporters, Foden was sitting in the dark by a lake in Stoke on Trent.
‘I went night fishing with my dad instead,’ Foden tells Sportsmail this week. ‘ I just felt too young to party. I was 17. So I thought it was the most sensible thing to do and Vinny actually said it was the right call. It was night fishing. So we were there until the morning.
‘Funnily enough we didn’t talk much about the football, we just chatted about normal dad and son stuff. He is a United fan. He is finding it difficult this year…’
Win at Brighton tomorrow and Pep Guardiola’s City will be champions again and Foden is in line for another medal. He was given one last year after making five appearances. This season the number has jumped to 13 and resembles the steady progress promised him by his manager when he spoke to Foden last summer.
On Monday, Foden started against Leicester but was actually sitting on the bench when Kompany struck the remarkable long-range goal that gave City victory. Turns out it was perhaps not the fluke that everybody presumed.
‘It’s funny because recently we have been doing a bit of shooting at the end of training and Vinny has suddenly decided to join in,’ Foden smiles.
‘He has got a bit, to be fair. He can hit “top bins” a few times so maybe that practice came in to play. It was made for him to score wasn’t it? He is always there in the big moments showing his class.
‘I saw the ball hit the top of the net. I was like, “Wow, did I just dream that?”
‘It was such a special goal and the most important of the year.’
Twenty-four hours later Foden was at the home he shares with parents Phil and Clare, watching title rivals Liverpool beat Barcelona 4- 0 in the Champions League. In a rather modern manner, Phil Snr and Jnr sat side by side in the kitchen watching on
their mobile phones. ‘It was brilliant what they did,’ says the City midfielder. ‘It got me out of my seat as a fan.
‘To do what they did without two key players just shows their heart and determination and shows how well we have done to be above a team as good as that. Our squad is obviously very special.
‘We could have beaten them at Anfield and it would have been a different story now. There may have been some breathing space! But we know we can go to Brighton on Sunday and put a job in. We can beat anybody on our day.’
****************************** IT is a wet and miserable Manchester afternoon and the player many have labelled as the future of English football is in a glorified warehouse near the M60 doing energetic keep-ups with some friends and a chap about to interview him for television.
Foden, dressed in a tracksuit and here on a day off, is slim and angular. He is good, but he is not flash and it seems deliberate. Unless you were watching really closely it wouldn’t be immediately apparent who the one with all the talent was.
Still only 18, Foden has been kept largely hidden from the media during his emergence from the City system. Aware of the
persistent it t narrative ti about b t hi his number of playing minutes at a time when other young English players are considering moves abroad, Guardiola hasn’t wanted him vulnerable to all the fuss.
Now that he is a regular in City’s Premier League squad, we are gradually being allowed to see a little more of him. This is his first proper chat with a national newspaper and it has been arranged as part of the launch of the Rise of the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles TV series on the Nicktoons TV channel.
Advised in advance that Foden is a ‘bit shy’, it transpires he isn’t. He is reserved, which is different. Wandering around Manchester, he is still surprised when people ask him for a photograph and admits he is working on his mental image of himself.
‘I wake up every morning and think my career is just going so fast,’ he says, cradling a mug of tea. ‘I am still young and trying to act normal but I think I need to start growing up. I go and play with David (Silva) and Kevin (De Bruyne) every day but still feel like a fan if you know what I mean?
‘I feel like asking them to sign something for me but I am actually playing with them.
‘I don’t mean I don’t want to stay normal because I do. But sometimes I get up in the morning and just think, “Wow”.’
On the pitch, the necessary mental shift has already taken place. After his two goals helped City win at Newport in the FA Cup, players from the Welsh club told him they had rarely observed such precocious talent.
‘They wished me luck with my career,’ he reveals. ‘ They were a great bunch of lads and it made me feel good.’
Physically he has some growing to do. The Premier League is a place for athletes and Foden has not yet developed the power that will come with age. But he was always small and, because of his talent, was always being asked to play with older boys. So he is used to the challenge.
‘Sometimes I feel leggy and off balance and I know it’s a growth spurt that is underway,’ he says. ‘My legs are long and my body needs to catch up. It will happen in time.
‘I look at some players and wish I was a bit stronger to look after myself but there is nowt I can do apart from a bit of gym and look after my body right. I was very underdeveloped and small when
‘Sometimes I feel leggy and off balance. I know it’s a growth spurt’
I was young but they used to tell me I had the technical ability to play up.
‘They said I had the brain of an older person so they would challenge me by playing me up against lads much bigger than me. I think it improved me a lot.
‘To this day I feel like I am still doing it and I think those experiences got me ready.
‘I used to get kicked a lot and still do. You can’t complain. You just have to get up and get on with it. And I am not the only one. Bernardo [Silva] is tiny but he has a brain and that is the main thing.
‘He still manages to win the ball off other people. You don’t need to be massive. You just need to know what you are doing on the pitch.’
Those who know Foden well will tell you of the influence of his parents and it is apparent. Foden has manners and remains boyish. He doesn’t drive and takes a taxi to and from training every day.
Some young footballers seem too keen for their careers to move fast while others can seem daunted by quick progress. It is a fine line and Foden seems to be on the right side of it.
‘Life has definitely changed but I still act like I am not even playing football,’ he explains. ‘I will go to the Trafford Centre and people will ask for a picture and I will be like, “Oh yeah, this is who I am now”. I don’t always realise. I would like to think the kids can look up to me.
‘I hope they now know what it’s possible to achieve in the game.
‘ Some kids don’t think it’s possible because of the team we have at City but anything is possible and you have to believe and work hard. If I can do it then anyone can.’
AFTER Foden scored twice as England won the Under 17 World Cup final in India in 2018, his father cried on the phone. ‘He doesn’t normally show emotion as he is quite a serious guy,’ recalls Foden.
‘But he cried that day. He said: “I can’t believe what you have done”. I didn’t really get that until I came home.’ For the Foden family, it was a major staging post on a journey that began when City academy scout Terry John spotted six-yearold Phil at his primary school in Stockport.
‘ I remember it like it was yesterday,’ Foden says. ‘ He was looking at year seven kids and I was year four or five.
‘Luckily my teacher said he had seen me in the playground and I seemed all right.
‘So they asked me to do this little session on my own, dribbling round cones. I was thinking, “What’s this?” but thought I would try my best. I was a bit young to really realise what it meant and who he was. He just gave me a number for my parents to call him and I am glad they did.’
Foden’s formative City years were spent in the pre-Abu Dhabi era when training for kids took place at the old Platt Lane site a adjacent to Manchester’s ‘ curry mile’. A facility shared with the public, it nevertheless produced players such as Micah Richards and Daniel Sturridge. Foden idolised them simply because they were exactly what he aspired to be: young, English and successful.
‘You see the under 8s training on perfect grass pitches at our place now and you think how amazing it would have been when to have that kind of facility when I was that age,’ he laughs. ‘We were on oldfashioned AstroTurf that left you with loads of grazes. But it’s great to see the training ground we have n now. It shows where we are going.’
City would appear to be heading towards another league title, maybe even a domestic treble. Foden, meanwhile, has the talent to go wherever he wishes.
‘There is always talk about me not playing enough but I don’t listen,’ he says.
‘I am only 18 but people are trying to judge me now. I don’t need to read anything in to that.
‘Pep believes in me and I know he will give me the opportunities.
‘What he said to me last summer has actually come true. Every year I have played a bit more.’
If catastrophe is avoided at Brighton tomorrow, the chances are there will be another big party but no guarantee the youngest member of the City squad will attend. He still doesn’t drink and is just as likely to head home to see his baby son Ronnie. Either that or the fishing rods will be out again.
He reckons his dad is ‘part-Blue’ now and his mum has always been of that persuasion.
‘There will always be pressure on you if you are a young player in a team like ours,’ he says, when asked if his home life shields him from some of the glare.
‘When you play you have to play well and show people what you can do. I try not to feel it. It’s been a good season for me and for the team. It’s a successful season if we get two or three trophies. You can’t complain about that can you?
‘Obviously we would have liked to go further in the Champions League and it was a little unlucky how we went out.
‘ But I think we have done brilliantly on the whole. If we win the league I will be so proud.’
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