As Harry Maguire and Kalvin Phillips know to their benefit, Gareth Southgate is as loyal to his squad as any England manager has ever been. But Southgate is no fool either. As James Maddison and Nick Pope know to their benefit too, it is always possible for the man of the moment to shoehorn his way into that squad.
After Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Sheffield United, West Ham manager David Moyes was unusually effusive about his star player, Jarrod Bowen, who, at 26, is approaching his prime. For all Moyes’s admission that “I don’t pick the England team” he came close to, at the very least, making a firm suggestion that Southgate should come calling. Here is why.
Goals
Saturday’s opener against Sheffield United was typical of last year’s player of the season at the club: efficient, unflashy, ruthless and supremely confident as he swept Vladimir Coufal’s low cross beyond Wes Foderingham. And it was the fifth game out of seven in which he has struck. Moreover, he does not score the same goal: there was the luscious curler at Bournemouth, the poacher’s strike at Brighton, the Martin Peters-style ghosted header at Luton and a brave stooping header at Anfield.
Team play
This season’s sharpshooting notwithstanding, the son of a teaching assistant has always been more than a scorer: only once has he broken double figures in a Premier League season. If Saturday’s opposition were less taxing than an offshore banking haven, Bowen showed his value as a team man. His relationship with Coufal has blossomed down West Ham’s right. The Czech full-back is keen to overlap, a dab hand with a cross and sufficiently cultured to play a passing game, as, of course, are Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier. But Bowen is not merely a winger too.
Moyes’s tactic of playing with a sole striker almost undid them last season, when Bowen was the only West Ham player to appear in every Premier League game, not least since Gianluca Scamacca lacked the wherewithal to make it work. The renaissance of Michail Antonio was also a benison for Bowen. On Saturday, even when West Ham coasted, the pair were soulmates. The crowd’s groans when Antonio allowed a rare second half chance to run away from him were leavened only by the fact that Bowen’s endeavour and laser-guided vision had crafted that chance.
Unfinished business
It should have been the ultimate football feelgood story, the kid who used to dress up as mohawk-era David Beckham was turned down by Aston Villa and drifted into non-league with Hereford United before leaping into the Premier League with Hull City had gained an England cap. “It is,” he said at the time, “the icing on the cake.”
Alas, it was the grimmest of fairy tales. Bowen’s four England caps, all in the Uefa Nations League, came within 10 heady days last June, after a rare injury had ruled him out of contention for games in March. He did not score – indeed, England only scored once in those ties – as he only completed one full game, appearing as substitute twice and withdrawn at half-time in the 4-0 debacle against Hungary at Molineux. This was not how it was supposed to be. Redemption beckons.
Fiorentina
To a man, the great players are all big game players. With 15 seconds of normal time remaining in last season’s Europe Conference League final, Bowen latched onto Lucas Paqueta’s exquisite through ball, shrugged off the challenge of Fiorentina’s lumbering Brazilian defender Igor, kept his cool and fired past Pietro Terracciano to win a trophy for West Ham. As Moyes acknowledged on Saturday, this was the moment Bowen proved himself to be a genuine big game player. Southgate will have been watching.
