"Unfortunately, he is one of the victims of this crazy calendar that only makes sense for those pursuing commercial gain." That's PFA chief executive Maheta Molango on Phil Foden — and it's a damning summary of how far the 25-year-old has fallen in two short years.
Thomas Tuchel left Foden out of England's 2026 World Cup squad, and few people pushed back. That's the part that should sting most. When a player of Foden's talent gets dropped from a major tournament and the reaction is mostly a shrug, something has gone seriously wrong.
From Player of the Season to peripheral figure
Cast your mind back to 2023/24. Foden was the best player in the Premier League — not one of them, the best. He won the Player of the Season award and looked like he was entering his peak years. Now he's a peripheral figure at the Etihad, his minutes inconsistent, his performances when he does play a pale imitation of that form.
Molango's theory is overload. "The number of games that he's been available for has dropped and, when he has been available, it has not been the version of Phil Foden we saw two years ago," he said. A congested calendar burning through elite players before they hit 26 is a legitimate structural problem. But Foden still has to find a way through it.
The World Cup absence, painful as it might feel, could actually work in his favour. While England's squad drags themselves through a gruelling summer tournament in North America and returns needing recovery time, Foden gets weeks of rest and preparation. He arrives at pre-season fresh. Everyone else doesn't.
A new manager changes everything — and nothing
Pep Guardiola is gone. The man who nurtured Foden from City's academy, who vouched for him through inconsistent patches and built the system around his strengths, is no longer there to protect him. The next manager inherits a squad with question marks all over it, and Foden will need to make his case from scratch.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. A clean slate can be exactly what a player in Foden's position needs. No baggage, no assumptions — just performances. City's attacking depth means there's no guaranteed spot waiting for him. He has to earn it.
The Premier League is a duller place when Foden isn't at his best. Any City betting market for next season is built on assumptions about how their attack functions — and right now, Foden is a liability in those calculations rather than an asset. A fit, firing Foden changes that picture completely.
Whether he can get back there is the only question that matters now. Molango called him part of "football's heritage" — a player who makes people dream. He's got one summer to remind everyone he still can.
