Revisiting Phillips’ Leeds debut: Cellino chaos reigned but academy provided hope - The Athletic 9/9/21

By Phil Hay

“Maybe I got lucky,” Kalvin Phillips said after his first England call-up last year. Maybe he did. Maybe everything in football is a game of chance. Or maybe Phillips is one of those players who looks and feels like the right choice, invariably worth the benefit of the doubt.

His career is a potted history of sliding-doors moments, starting with the headteacher who urged him not to leave school and join Leeds United’s academy because professional football was merely a pipedream. Later there were academy coaches who, as Phillips worked for his first pro deal, deliberated hard over whether to offer him one. There was the manager who, when more senior members of the square were missing, decided a 19-year-old Phillips should be the answer to a hole in Leeds’ midfield.

The debut he made away at Wolverhampton Wanderers on a blazing Easter Monday in 2015 was indicative of the infectious way in which Phillips convinces people to believe in him. From Wortley Juniors to the full England team, it paid to take a chance on him and avoid presumptions about his limits. The day before that first appearance at Molineux, Neil Redfearn looked at him and opted to gamble. Rodolph Austin was absent and so was Lewis Cook. Phillips would start.

Other staff at Thorp Arch wondered if the teenager was truly ready (Wolves were one of the stronger teams in the Championship, nearing the end of the Nouha Dicko-Benik Afobe-Bakary Sako era and nicely positioned to qualify for the play-offs). Redfearn had coached Leeds’ development side before stepping up to the position of first-team coach and he rated the best of the kids in it. To a degree, he trusted them more than some of the club’s experienced footballers. He was so confident in Phillips’ ability to cope against Wolves that he gave the midfielder next to no warning that his debut was coming. “I threw him in,” Redfearn says. “I knew he’d be fine.”

The match at Molineux, a game Leeds lost 4-3, had a wider narrative than Phillips’ debut. It was an endorsement of the academy at Thorp Arch and, in a pulsating second half, the contest offered something for a demoralised fanbase to cling to. As a club, Leeds were a mess. Massimo Cellino was two months into an ownership ban meted out by the EFL. Redfearn’s assistant, Steve Thompson, had been sacked without much explanation a few days earlier. The squad had seen off relegation but there were factions in it and later that month, six players would rule themselves out of a trip to Charlton in what appeared to be a protest against Redfearn. Amid the in-fighting, the core of juniors became a shining light.

There was Charlie Taylor, the Renault Clio driver. Taylor opened the scoring at Molineux after Phillips, in a more advanced role than Marcelo Bielsa asks of him today, hassled Wolves into a mistake on the right wing. There was Alex Mowatt, the rap-battler from Doncaster who turned a 3-1 deficit on its head in the space of nine minutes after half-time. There was Sam Byram, a full-back who surged so quickly from the youth-team ranks that Neil Warnock struggled to remember his name after Byram’s first pre-season appearance at Farsley. Cook might have featured too had he not been suffering from injured ankle ligaments. And then there was Phillips. The boy whose headteacher wrote to his mother to try to discourage his dream of a football career.

The conveyor belt had succeeded in forming New Kids on the Block and the best of the individual performances under Redfearn were coming from some of the youngest players available to him. Mowatt made 37 league starts that season. Byram made 36, Cook 33 and Taylor 22. There was a tendency to underestimate Phillips, to see him as the runt of a very talented litter, but to Redfearn, it was all a matter of time. Phillips would come good. Phillips would push himself. When opportunities presented themselves, Phillips would take them.

In the footage of the game, he looks barrel-chested but raw and fresh, with fuzzy hair, a faint goatee beard and the number 40 on his back. As Leeds feel their way into it, some of his current traits become obvious: constant running into space, quick passes to keep the ball moving and full-blooded challenges on Jack Price and Kevin McDonald (who is left in a heap and looks less than impressed).

Phillips marries all that with attempts to offer an outlet in attack and his aggressive pressing of McDonald allows Taylor to open the scoring in the 11th minute. Phillips charges at the Scottish midfielder, whose attempt to clear downfield strikes Richard Stearman in the back. The ricochet flies kindly to Taylor, who feathers the ball underneath Carl Ikeme, claiming his first Leeds goal.

Dicko equalises quickly, though, and Leeds are at the mercy of his pace down the left. But they are in the game, too, and full of energy. Phillips covers 30 yards to stop Ikeme from going short and helps Leeds hold their shape. The problems come when Wolves use gaps around Redfearn’s back four and Dicko scores at the end of the first half by beating the offside trap and battering in a floated pass from Sako. Three minutes into the second half, Afobe makes it 3-1. Game over, everyone thinks.

Mowatt has had a tidy but relatively quiet outing so far. As the hour passes, he comes into his own. Pockets open up and his cross tempts Danny Batth to swing a foot at it, slicing it past Ikeme. Moments before, a young Phillips can be seen gesturing at Luke Murphy, telling him to pass the ball more quickly.

Leeds feel a change in the wind and when they chase Wolves out of possession on the right flank, Mowatt bursts inside and beats Ikeme with a wicked sweep of his left foot from 25 yards. It’s 3-3 and Phillips is part of a pile of Leeds bodies celebrating in front of the away stand.

At no stage is Redfearn tempted to replace any of the academy products. They are two minutes from a draw when Dave Edwards glances in a cross and snatches a win for Wolves. Molineux erupts and, when full-time comes, sings them off the pitch with a rendition of “Dicko, Afobe, Sako”. Those three are almost at the end of their journey together. And eventually, that song will pass on to the debutant they have beaten.