sport news Kobbie Mainoo, Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden are England's reasons to believe. ... trends now

During those long days of Covid lockdown four years ago I would sit at my office window and watch a teenage boy dribbling a football in and out of cones on the family driveway across the road. He would do shuttle runs, too.

His father would sometimes watch but the boy clearly knew what he was doing. Turned out he was in Manchester United's academy and was following a detailed programme provided by his club.

I spoke to United's academy head Nick Cox about it at the time and he explained that his staff were determined to ensure their players were occupied and focussed as much as possible during those confusing and scary weeks when they were unable to come to the club.

More importantly, though, were the phone calls that were being regularly made to boys and their parents to check on mental and economic wellbeing. At one stage, there was a Zoom call made by first team manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

'We care about their football progress,' Cox explained to me back then. 'But first and foremost we need to make sure they are okay.'

I thought about all this on the way home from Wembley on Tuesday night because young Kobbie Mainoo would have been 14 when lockdown started. He was in United's system back then. Just another hopeful boy. Maybe he was guiding footballs through cones outside the family home in Stockport too. Maybe he picked up the phone one day to hear his academy coach on the line simply asking if he was all right.

And this is not just a Manchester United thing. It's an academy thing. It's a modern English football thing. This is the way it is now and that is why when we watch Mainoo easing the ball neatly and progressively through the England midfield in the rain against Belgium we should all feel lifted for all kinds of different reasons. This is the future of the game and of our young footballers and it looks and feels healthy.

In that England team on Tuesday we watched Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden too. And James Maddison and others. Before the game Bellingham and Foden offered their jackets to their mascots as the rain began to fall during the anthems. The TV cameras picked it up but it was not done for show. Afterwards in the interview area, Maddison paused before talking to the media as he wanted to watch the Wales penalty shoot-out on somebody's iPad. When he was subsequently told it had gone badly his first thoughts were for Spurs team-mates Ben Davies and Brennan Johnson.

We care first and foremost about what these lads do for us on the field. We want them to win. We have waited a long time and once again we feel as though England have an opportunity this summer in the European Championships. We don't expect these young men to live perfect lives. It is unrealistic. There will be blemishes. But they have been placed on the right path.

That's the important bit and as the Premier League continues to grow and push forward as a domestic competition of unrivalled quality and drama, it is impossible not to be heartened by the fact that our own young players remain at the heart of it.

England manager Gareth Southgate, who has name-checked Archie Gray at Leeds as another one to watch, does worry that one day there may not be enough of them. He points out that the number of home grown players at top clubs has never been lower. We should care about this and listen to him.

The influence of certain favoured agents at some of our clubs is a concern. Are all players being bought for the right reasons? No. Are there too many coming from around the world who are not necessarily better than what we can produce ourselves? Yes. Can the search for a quick fix by managers and sporting directors get in the way of sound judgement? Undoubtedly.

Still it is impossible to

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