Our Lion - Reviewing Kalvin Phillips’s first England Cap

09/09/2020

For the first time since 2004 a Leeds United player appeared for an England Team last night. Not just a Leeds player but a hometown talent that had risen from the peripherals of the team to local hero. Every Leeds fan felt like a proud Dad as Kalvin Phillips lined up for God save the Queen with three lions on his chest.

Not everybody was thrilled outside of those with a Leeds persuasion though. Some questioned why a player who has (until Saturday) not yet played a Premier League game had been selected and others on twitter cringed when his affectionate at Elland Road nickame was referenced on commentary. “The Yorkshire Pirlo”. The Daily Star went one further and labelled Phillips ‘out of his depth’ on the international stage.

But to say that is just lazy journalisim looking for an easy scapegoat for a woeful England performance. Granted we have seen Phillips perform better in a Leeds shirt but that is the Championship against a very decent International team away including stars of Inter Milan and Barcelona. Phillips is used to dictating play from his lone pivot position without having Declan Rice getting in his way and the system Gareth Southgate chose to use got the best out of nobody not least England’s front three of Kane, Sancho and Sterling who should really be one of the most exciting strike forces in world football.

What we did see from Phillips was his signature long range of passing and his combative tackling that has seen him become the apple of the Elland Road faithful’s eye.

His stats also add up and this comparison with Declan Rice shared on twitter by @mightywhite83 only emphasises my own long standing opinion that United’s number 23 is better than his West Ham counterpart.

Also on twitter, @lufcvision shared a fanstastic montage of Phillips’s best moments and range of passing in the game.

What should also be noted is his sheer delight at his call up and his professionalism doing his club proud. In this England squad we have seen Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood who both made their debuts at 18 get sent home for trying to meet girls off snapchat in Iceland. An offence to their duty of playing for England at the best of times, let alone during a global pandemic. This was somewhat unsurprising from this new generation of players who seem to have a large sense of entitlement and thinking that an England apperance is just a right of passage that will soon come along again despite their misdemeanours on the first England outing.

Marcelo Bielsa knew how much this call up meant to Kalvin Phillips and how well earnt it was and so gifted him a Newell’s Old Boys shirt from his playing days to congratulate him. In turn Phillips’s has apparently promised to give his manager his England shirt he wore in Copenhagen as a sign of mutual respect that has made this England apperance, Leeds’s Premier League return and Bielsaball being a hundred times more entertaining than our national team all possible.

Kalvin, you done us proud.

By Lawrence O’Sullivan