GLUE: England's John Stones (Image: Julian Finney/Getty Images)placeholder image
GLUE: England's John Stones (Image: Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Thomas Tuchel has ruffled a few feathers with his England squad announcement, so why hasn’t Phil Foden been picked?
Manchester City will always lose most of their first team squad during international breaks although Pep Guardiola probably wishes that John Stones was on the list of names who were sitting out the next couple of weeks.
The 31-year old is an established member of Thomas Tuchel’s squad with a shortage of truly elite centre-halves probably playing a key role in his inclusion. The omission of Jude Bellingham has raised an eyebrow or two, as has Phil Foden not being called up given his much-improved form at the beginning of this season.
John Stones on Man City pair not being picked for England
Stones, with 83 caps, is an experienced campaigner at international level now and, speaking to Henry Winter on Talksport, has been giving his thoughts on teammate Foden missing out as well as City loanee Jack Grealish being overlooked despite making an immediate impact at Everton. When asked about the duo staying at home, the City defender said: “Well, it's difficult to say. I've not watched much of the games, obviously, played with Phil, knowing how well he's playing. Jack (Grealish) scored at the weekend, Jude's come back.
“And it's clear to see how much quality all three of them have got. And I've always sympathised with managers as well that have to choose a squad or start in 11. Their decisions within football, because it's very under the microscope and they've got a lot of pressure on them. And I know that the lads that will be at home will be frustrated and sad that they're not here because they want to be. And the guys that are here deserve to be, well, everyone deserves to be here. And that's the difficult part.
“And I think that knowing the guys, the three guys, they'll just use it as fuel and motivation to try and get into the next squad and keep performing at such a high level, which they do, and they're all great professionals as well. And I think that shows what strength in depth that we've got in the England squad at the minute with, you know, all the players are playing so well, as I said, deserve to be here. And yeah, giving the manager that headache to select a squad.”
Why haven’t Grealish and Foden been picked?
Winter, who described Stones as “world class”, went onto explain his thinking behind Tuchel’s decision not to pick the playmakers what Grealish and Foden are up against to get back into the England manager’s plans: “Well, taking it in reverse order, I mean, the Jack Grealish one, I did, I mean, when he scored that winner at the weekend, I did like what Everton did on their bio. They changed their X bio to ‘Grealish for England’, which I thought was great because it shows the affection that people have for Jack Grealish and the fact that he's playing well. I mean, Jack can play as a 10, he can play off the left, but you look around this squad, Marcus Rashford is playing well on the left for Barcelona, so he was playing either side.
“Anthony Gordon is playing really well for Newcastle on the left. England aren't really short of players out there. And then you look at number 10, I mean, England are not short of number 10s as well. Cole Palmer's got to come back when he's fit as well. Phil Foden, whether he's an 8, playing a bit more as an 8, it's good to see him sort of increasingly getting back into form for City. But for me, it was, you could argue (Adam) Wharton.”
Sentiment doesn’t seem to be a word in Tuchel’s vocabulary who seems to prefer the physicality of players like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Jordan Henderson and Elliott Anderson and the pace of players like Gordon and Rashford over the creativity of Foden and Grealish. If he isn’t successful though, the attention will inevitably turn to the list of players he didn’t deem as being good enough for selection.
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