Soccer

Foden signs 5½-year contract extension with Manchester City

The 18-year-old midfielder has become a first-team squad regular for the champions this season

Manchester City’s Phil Foden. He has played 13 times for City this season. Photograph: PA Wire

Jamie Jackson
Mon Dec 10 2018 - 19:47

Phil Foden has signed a 5½-year contract extension with Manchester City that ties him to the club until the summer of 2024.

The 18-year-old midfielder has become a first-team squad regular for the champions this season under Pep Guardiola, with his latest appearance coming as an 84th-minute replacement in Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Chelsea. In all Foden has played 13 times this season, and Guardiola has continually praised his progress.

Txiki Begiristain, the club’s sporting director, said: “We are delighted to have secured Phil for the next 5½ years. He is an outstanding talent, and he is Manchester City-born and bred, so this is where he wants to play his football. Under Pep and with the players we have here around him, he is in the best place possible to develop as a player.”

Foden is Stockport-born and a lifelong City fan. His first-team breakthrough came as an unused substitute in the 1-1 draw with Celtic in a Champions League group game in December 2016, before a debut in the same competition last November, the opening of 10 appearances that season.

READ MORE

Foden’s maiden City strike came in the 3-0 Carabao Cup win over Oxford in September. Part of the playmaker’s rise came in England’s Under-17 World Cup triumph in October 2017, when Foden scored twice and won the award for the tournament’s best player.

Foden’s agreement will dampen fears he could be minded to depart City to secure regular matches as a starter, as Jadon Sancho did. Sancho was in the same age group as Foden at City, and in August last year joined Borussia Dortmund.

- Guardian

LATEST STORIES