Do we like them?

Do we like Phil Foden?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean harm record and one dumb lockdown mistake, but not much public good or public stance on anything beyond football to lift it higher.

Foden is a City academy product who has played 411 games and scored 131 goals for the club since 2017. He's the local-lad-made-good story that football loves, and he's stayed with the club that raised him.

The latest chapter is a bit bruising. After a poor run of form in 2026, he missed out on England's World Cup squad, then signed a fresh deal to 2030 anyway. Reuters quotes him saying “I hope I'll be able to repay you for years to come.”

His one real stain is from September 2020, when he and Mason Greenwood were dropped from England's squad for breaching Covid rules in Iceland. Manchester City called his actions “totally inappropriate” and Southgate said the pair had apologised. It was a daft, selfish mistake in the middle of a pandemic, not a pattern, and nothing we found suggests a repeat.

On the harm check, we found nothing. There were no anti-LGBTQ+ comments, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no culture-war grifting in the reporting we read. He rarely says anything on politics at all, so this is a pass on what we could find rather than a ringing endorsement. We found nothing on the climate or on the causes the family cares about either.