The England squad at Euro 2024 is heavily influenced by the playing fields of South Manchester and three players who could start against Slovakia today grew up in the same area.
Kobbie Mainoo and Phil Foden were both born in Stockport and played for grassroots clubs in the area
The banlieues of Paris, the street footballers in Sao Paulo, the academy talent factories in Lisbon – all of them production lines for a steady flow of talent – but to the list can be added a small triangle just south of Manchester that might be called upon to help rescue England’s Euro 2024 campaign in Germany tonight.
For 18 minutes against Slovenia on Tuesday, the grassroots clubs around Stockport accounted for three players representing England at a major tournament. After their impact, the trio of Kobbie Mainoo, Cole Palmer and Phil Foden could all be involved from the start for the last-16 tie against Slovakia.
Mainoo and Foden were born in Stockport and Palmer in Wythenshawe and just five years separate a trio of Premier League stars that are bringing a degree of technical excellence to the England squad. Had Marcus Rashford made the cut then it would have been another Wythenshawe wide man to add to the pack.
The geographical links are unmistakable and Mainoo, Foden and Palmer spent time in the England camp chatting about the local teams they had played for and who they had played against, rolling back the years to when the sport didn’t carry the pressure for them that it does this weekend.
Mainoo’s journey began with Cheadle and Gatley, Foden’s with Reddish Vulcans and Palmer’s with NJ Wythenshawe. Mainoo, 19, ended up at United as a boyhood red while Foden, the elder statesman at 24, was loyal to City as a boyhood blue. Palmer, 22, was the United fan who signed for City but has since moved to Chelsea. Together they are raising eyebrows, sending talent spotters and scouts flocking to South Manchester’s pitches to find the next generational talent to come out of the area.
“It’s a hotbed of junior pre-academy football because of the growth of private leagues,” said Joe Makin, football development officer at Vulcans and Foden’s first coach, as well as the academy recruitment co-ordinator at Manchester City.
“This is my 30th year at Vulcans, so when I started there were probably two or three junior leagues, maybe four at the most across the whole of Greater Manchester. Now they’re popping up all over the place, the levels are higher, which means that they’re training in a more professional manner, even though it’s the local junior clubs. The coaches are getting invited into academies, they’re copying the methods right back down to the grassroots.”
Foden during his days with Reddish Vulcans
Steve Vare was Mainoo’s first coach at Cheadle and Gatley and he can remember the five-year-old beginning in the indoor soccer school. Even in the 14 years since, the level of development has shot up.
“A grassroots club can give an opportunity to come and play football, enjoy it in an environment and if they’re good enough and they want it enough then hopefully some of the professional clubs come in and take them on to that next level,” he said.
“It just gives them a good foundation in terms of starting out. I think at the time that Kobbie finally signed for Manchester United there was a queue of scouts that had noticed his talents and were looking to sign him up.”
The development of private leagues and soccer schools in the area is due to the explosion of youngsters wanting to play football. One can’t survive without the other. The soccer school run by the Vulcans has gone from 15 to 20 boys to 50 to 60.
“And they all want to be footballers,” said Makin. “Then you get the likes of Phil, I mean I can remember the day I first saw Phil and I can remember Cole and Kobbie.
“City were after Kobbie just as much as United were but it was obviously always going to be a United player, just like Phil was going to be a City player. But they just stand out, they’ve just got this little bit of something. But what’s happening now is the whole bubble is going up. It’s a generational thing.”
There are links everywhere. Makin helped take Foden and Palmer to City and they tried to sign Mainoo as well. Vare coached a grassroots club that had some of Palmer’s mates in and he used to come down to watch the under-16s play after training with City.
The emergence of talent from the area has led to an increase in scouts on the touchlines on a Saturday and Sunday morning. New rules governing academies mean youngsters can only sign for a club within an hour of their home, but in the north west that still leaves plenty of options.
Scouts from United, City, Liverpool, Everton, Bolton, Preston, Blackpool, Crewe, Stoke and even Leeds will come to watch games in the area, hoping to find another Mainoo, Palmer or Foden.
“The competition is frightening,” said Makin. “You can’t afford to miss somebody. It’s highly unlikely now that any boy will get missed because everything is done with a microscope.
“We’ve all got scouts, but now we’ve got spotters and volunteers, junior club managers who they’ll see somebody and ring somebody who’ll ring somebody and eventually that boy will get watched, nobody gets missed.”
“I think that’s just the sophistication of the scouting network in general,” added Vare. “I think that clubs are realising that there’s such a clamour for finding the best talent as early as they can, that they are coming to watch grassroots games.
“And I think if the grassroots club is well set up, it probably gives the scouts more confidence that there will be the potential of a good player amongst the ranks of the club. And there’s a lot of good grassroots clubs in around this area that are giving kids that foundation to play football.”
Those grassroots clubs have helped to develop three players who stand out for their intelligence and technical quality. They are players who epitomise the change in development in English football, from athletes to technicians.
Graeme Fowler was a coach at NJ Wythenshawe when he spotted a four-year-old Palmer running rings around older kids at a trial for the under-7s.
“I walked to the field and saw this little blonde kid who was only dead small and just running with the ball,” he said. “At that age, the kids just chase the ball and he had 10 kids chasing him. He was running with it and would just do a simple turn and go the other way and the kids would then follow him the other way. They couldn’t get the ball off him, wherever he turned, and he was a year younger than them all.
“He was miles above everyone brain-wise. His technical ability was really good but I had a lot of good technical players but his brain was just so far advanced for a footballing brain at a young age it was incredible.
“He was doing stuff at seven and eight that I didn’t see 14-year-olds do. His quickness of thought on the pitch, the things that he saw, and his technical ability to do stuff and be inventive, he was really good to watch. I always say that I had some good players but he stands out as the best player I’ve ever coached.”
The trio are now serving as an inspiration to their community as well. It can become a cycle, these young players show there is a pathway and give children who come from the same area, who went to the same schools, who play on the same pitches belief that there is a route to professional football for them. That this isn’t a dream that just happens to other people.
“In terms of the inspiration, that was the reason why I originally agreed to do the stories,” explained Vare. “It was more to hopefully inspire, not just kids in Cheadle and Gatley, but grassroots in general really, to say that these players aren’t just a figment of people’s imagination, they are lads that have started off somewhere at grassroots clubs. It’s a really good news story that people can relate to, certainly from this area.
“Kobbie was just a five-year-old boy when he came down through our soccer school and the children can relate to that. Unless they’ve been on Planet Zog they know Kobbie’s story.”
Makin had an example just this week as to how young boys turning at the Vulcans still get starstruck when they find out Foden was once of them.
“There was a little boy on Wednesday at the soccer school,” he said. “He just happened to mention that he was playing in FIFA and Phil was on the game, and did he really come to our soccer school? Because now he’s playing with Ronaldo and against all these top players in the world. So the kids love it.”
On the walls of England’s Euro 2024 training base in Blankenhain are retro posters of the 26-man squad with a nod to the clubs where their journeys started. Three of them have a distinctive south Manchester flavour and they could all be integral in making sure they stay on the wall for another week at least.