Almost a decade since his debut, and we still do not know who Phil Foden is on the pitch

Phil Foden is someone who gives you the impression of a young boy who is yet to fully grow into his stride, both as a human and as a footballer. But the reality of the situation is a whole different landscape when you look at Foden through the microscope.

As he enters the first season in his professional career with Pep Guardiola not his manager, Foden is still a brilliant enigma which is yet to be fully solved. He is 26 years old, has won practically everything there is to be won at club level, represented England in 3 different international tournaments. He is a 49-cap England international and has 225 appearances for Manchester City.

Yet, despite the raft of changes that have happened in the embryonic stages of this Enzo Maresca era at Man City, we still do not really know what Phil Foden is on the pitch and what exactly he does?

Is Foden a forward/striker or an attacking midfielder along the likes of say Bruno Fernandes or Cole Palmer? He is a very good passer of the ball, but stops just a couple of rungs short of being called an elite orchestrator or a creator. Is fleet of foot and has very good ball control, but once again  you cannot classify him as a dribbler along the likes of Jeremy Doku or Antoine Semenyo. He scores goals as well. A fair few of them, but not enough to once again call him a bonafide goal-scorer. 

If you could remove a list of the top 10 players in any of the above-mentioned categories, it is safe to say that Phil Foden will not feature in any of them. But yet he is irresistibly good at what he does, which adds more and more layers to his mystique as a player.

In his 9 seasons as a pro, and his seasons under Guardiola, the Catalan has provided a multitude of answers in trying to articulate what Foden is, but none of them have stayed, and neither of them sounded intelligible in any shape or form. From calling him a winger in 2022 that will eventually play through the middle, he reneged on his answer in 2023. He was then pushed around as a Number 10, a false 9, and then in what was the last season for Guardiola at the club, he was playing as a deep-lying midfielder.

In these last 5 years, Foden under Guardiola went from becoming a generational talent to a very good jack of all trades, with no breathing room afforded to him in becoming a master of anyone because of how quickly he was moved from one position to another. And this very chopping and changing could possibly be one reason for his steady decline.

This was Foden who won the PFA Player of the Year in 2024, having put in one brilliant performance after another. But since then, he has just been drifting and meandering from one position to another, before suffering the ignominy of being a complete passenger. An unused sub against Real Madrid, garbage time minutes against Arsenal in the Carabao Cup Final, and an eventual ouster from the English World Cup side.

Despite entering what should be the peak years of his career, we barely have any semblance of context when it comes to Foden and his qualities. Does he have the smarts, guile, and the skill to play in a team that is struggling given that he has been in a City side that has been a modicum of stability? What about his intelligence from a tactical standpoint? Does he have the confidence and the temperament to dictate games? Is he the player to build a team around?

With Maresca in now, Foden faces a season very equivalent to a last-chance saloon sort of a situation. He has a new coach, a new midfield, and a brand new structure. And perhaps, maybe just perhaps, we may finally know what Phil Foden actually is. Because we are almost a decade off since his City debut, but we still do not know who he is on the pitch.