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It may only have been Andorra and it was, as Gareth Southgate pointed out, a game in which you couldn’t really judge a player’s defensive capabilities. But even so Phil Foden’s performance was eye-catching coming a week after he had shone so bright for Manchester City against Liverpool.
The 21-year-old, who missed the Euro 2020 final three months ago because an injury which has also disrupted the start of this season, is maturing into a midfielder who might one day bear comparison to one of the greats in Paul Gascoigne, the player he paid homage to last summer with his peroxide blonde hair.
Gareth Southgate doesn’t really do overstatement but was he moved enough last night to say: ‘It’s fabulously exciting, isn’t it, when you have a player who sees the passes he sees and hit them and executes them as he did?’ Foden regularly picked out players throughout the game with precise passes over 50 yards or more but notably in setting up Jadon Sancho to provide the assist for Ben Chilwell’s opener and for England’s second scored by Bukayo Saka.
Phil Foden dazzled for England in a new role as the Three Lions drubbed
