Manchester City midfielder Phil Foden has become a “victim” of football’s relentless fixture calendar, according to Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Maheta Molango, who broke his silence on Tuesday after the 25-year-old was omitted from Thomas Tuchel’s 26-man England squad for the 2026 World Cup in North America.
Foden, who started just 18 of City’s 38 Premier League matches last season and was withdrawn at half-time in seven of those, failed to register a goal or assist in his final 11 appearances of the campaign. Tuchel confirmed the decision in Berlin on Monday, naming Cole Palmer, Jude Bellingham, Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze as his preferred attacking midfielders, with the FA Cup-winning Crystal Palace forward edging out the 2023-24 Premier League Player of the Season.
Molango, speaking at the PFA’s annual welfare summit in Manchester, pulled no punches. “Phil is a victim of a system that simply asks too much of its best players,” he said. “We have warned for three years that the calendar would break someone, and now it has broken one of the most gifted English footballers of his generation. This is not a footballing decision in isolation — it is a workload decision dressed up as one.”
The numbers behind the burnout
Foden has started 217 senior matches since the start of the 2021-22 season, a figure surpassed among English players only by Declan Rice (224) and Harry Kane (231). He played 4,089 minutes across club and country in 2023-24, the season he was named PFA Players’ Player of the Year, before a summer that included six Euro 2024 fixtures and just 19 days of complete rest before City’s pre-season tour of the United States.
The expanded Club World Cup, which City contested last June and July in Florida and Atlanta, added a further seven matches to his schedule. By the time the Premier League resumed in August, Foden had recorded the lowest off-season recovery window of any City regular — a fact Pep Guardiola alluded to in October when he said his playmaker was “not the same boy” who had dominated English football the previous spring.
The statistics through the 2025-26 season tell the story. Foden’s expected goal involvement per 90 minutes fell from 0.78 to 0.41, his sprint count dropped by 22 per cent, and his progressive carries — once the signature of his game — were down a third. Two separate hamstring complaints in November and February cost him 14 matches in total.
A wider warning for English football
Molango’s intervention will resonate with a dressing room that has watched Rodri miss almost a full year with cruciate damage sustained at the start of last season, and seen Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer and Bellingham all carry significant minute-loads into international tournaments. The PFA, alongside European players’ union FIFPRO, lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission in 2024 over Fifa’s expansion of the Club World Cup, citing the absence of a meaningful close-season.
“Phil’s case is the canary in the coal mine,” Molango added. “If we keep stacking competitions on top of one another, England will continue to lose players at exactly the moment supporters expect them to deliver. Tuchel has not picked Foden because Foden, through no fault of his own, has not been able to be Foden.”
The German head coach has otherwise leaned on familiar names. The squad includes:
- Jordan Pickford, Aaron Ramsdale and Dean Henderson in goal
- A back line built around John Stones, Marc Guehi and Levi Colwill
- Trent Alexander-Arnold and Reece James as competing right-backs
- Bellingham, Rice and Adam Wharton anchoring midfield
- Kane, Ollie Watkins and a recalled Marcus Rashford leading the line
What happens next for Foden
Foden remains contracted to City until 2027 and Guardiola has insisted he will be central to the club’s plans for the post-World Cup rebuild. A full pre-season — his first uninterrupted summer since 2021 — is expected to be transformative. Sources close to the player say he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the call and intends to use the six-week break to train privately in Cheshire with a personal performance coach.
Tuchel has left the door open. “Phil is one of the most talented players this country has produced,” he said in Berlin. “This is a squad for one tournament. It is not a verdict on his career.” For Molango and the PFA, however, the verdict is already in: until the game’s governing bodies confront the calendar, more Fodens will follow.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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