Category: England

A very normal thing happened on Sunday night. Phil Foden was sensational. I do not want to oversell this. There is no deep or meaningful theme here.

There are no hidden layers or wider significances, no political or cultural context. It rests almost entirely on a single argument, and the argument is that Foden is sensational. If you are not on board with this idea, the next 840 words may not be for you.

Foden was sensational but he was sensational in a very normal way. He set up two goals, for Harry Kane and Bukayo Saka, and was instrumental in the other. The rest of the time he simply did lots of Foden things: sacrificial runs up the left wing, neat link play, tidy defensive covering.

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Photograph: Caspar Benson

None of this was new to anyone who has seen him playing for Manchester City every week. You do not need me to tell you that Foden is sensational.

And yet by the same token it feels worth dwelling on just how sensational Foden was here. Because in England’s era of extreme competence there is a danger that nights like these, games like these, performances like these, somehow become normalised. There has been no outburst of national hysteria: no Gazza explosion, no Owen moment, no Rooney-mania. Foden’s image does not hang from one of Doha’s many skyscrapers.

Even in the aftermath of this 3-0 win against Senegal it was Jude Bellingham who seemed to attract the bulk of the tributes, Kane who claimed the player-of-the-match award (although when asked who really deserved it, Foden was the first name Kane mentioned). Here, as for much of his career to date, Foden’s gift was assimilated, priced in, accepted as established fact.

Perhaps, in the long run, this is for the best: a long-overdue recession in the hype economy of English football. In a sense Foden’s curse has been to spend his entire career surrounded by very good footballers in a successful team. There is no real sense of trajectory, no demons to slay, no haters to conquer. Foden was born sensational and everyone knew it. At no point has he really had the capacity to surprise us.

And yet something here was new. For the first time in a tournament game, Foden started on the left wing, after a successful audition in the second half against Wales. This is the position he has most often played at club level, and even if Pep Guardiola has shifted him around this season it currently remains his best role for two reasons.

First, he remains primarily a creator rather than a killer. By contrast Raheem Sterling, England’s first-choice left-winger for some years, increasingly sees himself as a goalscorer these days. He tries to take up central positions, instinctively makes diagonal runs into the space Harry Kane leaves behind. And of course he does it very well, but it has its implications. Foden, by contrast, is less concerned about getting himself into scoring positions. This largely explains his England scoring record of three goals in 21 games.

Second, Foden is a left-footer, one of just four in a squad of 26 players. This sounds a little antediluvian, a little “swing it in for the big man, Jason Wilcox”. But for a player as gifted as Foden, it gives him options. His default run is around the outside of the right‑back, rather than in between the full-back and the centre-half. Not only does this stretch defences and allow him to cross on his stronger foot, but it creates the sort of gaps that players such as Bellingham eat for brunch.

Consider England’s first goal, a move finished by Jordan Henderson and set up by Bellingham but started with a deft back‑heeled flick from Foden by the left touchline. In fact, Foden is just inside the England half when he receives the ball and his momentum takes him off the pitch.

If you are a forward with your eyes fixed on goal, you could scarcely find yourself in a worse position. But crucially Foden has taken the right-back Youssouf Sabaly with him. And Sabaly is done. He is out of the game. Senegal are now trying to defend an attack on their right flank without their right-back. Chaos ensues.

And this is what gets missed in the focus on Foden’s indifferent goal record. He makes room for others to play. He greases the wheels. He has an otherworldly first touch and an ability to keep the ball under extreme pressure. He can lay the ball off first-time for Kane to score England’s second and he can set up the third with a cross through the legs of Kalidou Koulibaly, because he’s Foden and that’s just what he does.

On Saturday England were playing a small-sided training exercise with mini-goals, designed to encourage quick feet and precise finishing. At one point Foden simply beat two opponents, dribbled past the goal and then back-heeled it past a stunned Saka. Nobody went crazy. Foden’s teammates did not clasp their faces and mob him in glee, as often happens. He’s Foden. That’s just what he does.

England have strolled into the quarter-finals with barely a headache. This equalled their highest win in a World Cup knockout match. They have scored 12 goals in four games without a single penalty. And they have done it with some of the most gifted and likeable footballers ever to leave these shores. It may feel normal. But it really isn’t.

England’s second goal just before half-time at Al Bayt Stadium, the goal that killed this World Cup last-16 tie, was a pure Jude Bellingham moment. Watching the three white England shirts surge and veer like an aerial display team across that wide-open lozenge of green, it almost felt like a moment of show-Bellingham, a gloss to go with all the close-quarter moments in between, the moments of graft that had kept England in this game in its early stages.

This, though, was pure cinema. England had been flat at times in the first half against Senegal, had seemed to be playing with a tension headache. But they were 1-0 up when Bellingham picked the ball up forty yards from his own goal, shrugged his way into space, and looked up. You could almost hear the whirr of maths being crunched, lanes and distances overlaid, prelude to a moment of calculated abandon as Bellingham surged for the open space, sensing the tender point in front of him.

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Qatar: beyond the football

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This is a World Cup like no other. For the last 12 years the Guardian has been reporting on the issues surrounding Qatar 2022, from corruption and human rights abuses to the treatment of migrant workers and discriminatory laws. The best of our journalism is gathered on our dedicated Qatar: Beyond the Football home page for those who want to go deeper into the issues beyond the pitch.

Guardian reporting goes far beyond what happens on the pitch. Support our investigative journalism today.

Photograph: Caspar Benson

This was a cold decision, a calculated piece of timing. But it also just looked like fun, the pure pleasure in finding no resistance, of being able to move through all that lighted space. And Bellingham can move.

He has that easy, lengthening stride, a man who always seems to be running downhill. He veered away from one green shirt, bumped another off, then funnelled the perfect pass into Phil Foden’s path, haring away down the left. Foden knew what to do. The pass inside was perfect to Harry Kane, who, frankly, just wasn’t capable of missing this.

It wasn’t really a finish, more a release of anger, a goal-vomit, the ball smashed into a spot close to the centre of the net with an audible shout. And it was fitting that Bellingham should make it, should have provided the key part in the key moment of a game that might have run away from England early on, but which ended in a disarmingly routine 3-0 victory. Because he was magnificent in those difficult moments, a source of control when it felt like this thing was close to the edge.

This is a player who can basically do anything, who has the full quiver of midfield skills, who can pass and score and dribble, who can set the tempo or disrupt it.

And of course, as we know, he can surge. And that newly installed mobility in the centre is perhaps the single most exciting thing about this late-stage Southgate team, the part that makes you start to wonder, soberly, where this thing might end. The idea of the surging box-to-box player the rampaging run-shoot-tackle creature, a kind of midfield wildebeest, is baked into English football lore.

The surge-midfielder seems to occupy the same mental space as heavy cavalry, as the Lancaster bomber. We think of Bryan Robson, shoulder in a sling, head bandaged, pounding through some pre-modern quagmire, or Steven Gerrard in full gallop-mode, ears whirring, knees pumping.

There haven’t actually been many of them. In reality this thing, like so many others in the same area, has often been a puzzle of uneven capacities.

Bellingham is not this, he is more like a supercharged, high-spec modern upgrade. Has there been there a more rounded, more compelling central midfielder on Qatar’s lighted stages in the opening four games of this World Cup?

Bar Bukayo Saka in for Marcus Rashford, Gareth Southgate picked the same team as last time for this knockout game. And that is now just the right team. No drama, no fudge no gambles, no need to tinker. The three-man midfield is a genuine strength for England. It has been a slightly haphazard process to get here.

But Bellingham-Rice-Henderson is the most balanced midfield England have had in the Southgate era, in the age of Hodgson, or indeed any era you care to mention going right back through the strangled and weirdly four-square attempts to make the years of plenty work under Sven-Göran Eriksson. It was the midfield that made and also scored the opening goal. And of course it was Bellingham again, running ahead of Kane, taking a lovely, pass into his stride, waiting, waiting some more, then glancing up to register the shape in his peripheral vision. The cut back was perfect too, snaked inside the full back as he kept running. Henderson was already there, the finish a lovely soft, easy action.

The celebration between the two was just as engrossing, a combination of forehead-to-forehead man-shouting, followed by a genuinely tender hug.

Bellingham had spoken about Henderson in the week. There are 13 years between them, but they clearly have a bond. And Henderson is a vital player in that newly-minted three in ways that extend beyond his basic ability to run and pass and cover. Essentially, Henderson is England’s grown-up in there, willing and able to be horrible, to be less elegant and less technical than Bellingham and Declan Rice, but also willing to snipe at the referee, to waste time and step on the penalty spot, to run the weaselly parts of a game. Henderson is that guy. You need that guy.

There is a chance England’s 4-3-3 may be sacrificed in the next game if Southgate feels alarmed enough by the idea of Harry Maguire exposed to France’s speed in attack.

It is to be hoped he retains this bolder shape. England have looked a weary team at times during this World Cup. In that midfield three they have found a rare balance, and a rare point of strength. It deserves to be tested.