Is Kalvin Phillips in the right place? - The Square Ball 27/12/22

CHONKY

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

When Kalvin Phillips, the Leeds born and raised midfielder, scored the winner in Leeds United’s centenary celebration match against Birmingham City in October 2019, manager Marcelo Bielsa described the moment as a gift from god. “Sometimes, God puts things in the right place,” he said, and while there had been no better candidate for scoring that goal than Kalvin, it felt like a touch of the divine was needed for the right thing to be done. Leeds United’s history has rarely been about the right things falling into the right places.

Since Phillips went over the Pennines to join Manchester City this summer, Bielsa’s words have allowed different interpretations. Maybe the right place for Kalvin was Leeds all along, because Manchester sure hasn’t looked like home from home for him so far. Or maybe it was about the level that goal was scored at, and the Championship was where Phillips belonged. Or perhaps this is a question of which deity had the most influence on helping Kalvin be in the right place on that day. Bielsa wouldn’t call himself God, but sometimes he bears that responsibility.

The right place. People from Leeds are supposed to know their place, but Phillips has just had his Christmas ruined by pursuing dreams beyond West Yorkshire on top of all he’d already done. The big transfer and the shoulder surgery all had the World Cup in mind, and he made it, and in that place he met reality. A combination of his lack of recent playing time and Jude Bellingham’s excellence made Phillips a bit-part squad player for England, with — as Sam Lee’s report for The Athletic points out — a bit-part squad player’s training regimen. It was the perfect storm for Phillips, a player whose body has always resisted what his coaches demand, travelling to Qatar without any match fitness in his tank and finding no way of adding some. Now he’s back and his new manager, Pep Guardiola, is talking about it. “He is not injured, he arrived overweight,” Guardiola said in his press conference ahead of Christmas, and playing Leeds. “I don’t know [why]. He didn’t arrive in the conditions to train and to play.” The contentious point seems to be that Phillips took a week’s break instead of going straight back from the England squad to training with Manchester City, but the counter-argument is that Manchester City could have made him.

It’s impossible to tell whether Guardiola has made all this public because he’s angry at Phillips for being unprofessional, England for not protecting Phillips’ fitness, his staff for not being stricter, or Fifa for scheduling this World Cup. Possibly he’s just angry at the world for all of it. Possibly he needs to get a grip. The question of Phillips’ fitness isn’t new, and the answer isn’t impossible: first Thomas Christiansen then Marcelo Bielsa understood he needed closer management, firmer checks, extra work. Phillips stands accused of not working hard enough to be ready, and the extra time off condemns him. But he seems damned too with a body that, no matter what work he puts into it, resists. He might have been training his backside off and it’ll still be too big for City’s scales. The point stands that Leeds and Bielsa turned Phillips into one of the most fearsomely physical players in the Championship, but now England, Manchester City and Pep Guardiola seem flummoxed by his chonk.

For some reason Guardiola seems to find the side of coaching that demands more personal involvement to be distasteful. Recently, speaking in court in the ongoing trial of Benjamin Mendy, it was startling how uninterested Guardiola sounded in the lives of his players. “I can see the players when we are together in training sessions,” he said. “In their private life, I don’t know what they do … I don’t know what they are doing out of my control of the training sessions and the games.” Guardiola seems to feel that professional athletes can be trusted to live their lives according to the necessities of their sport, but the results — one in court, one overweight, the helter-skelter vibe of Jack Grealish’s first season — feels reminiscent of Leeds United’s experiment, around the turn of the millennium, in signing as many young players as they could, paying them fortunes every week, and letting them do what they wanted. If you like, you can trust men in the bloom of youth, when given bodies, riches and status beyond measure, to behave themselves. But all the evidence suggests you shouldn’t.

Despite Guardiola’s blind spots, don’t expect Manchester City to suffer the sort of implosion that ruined Leeds United for fifteen years. Clubs on the scale of Manchester City in 2022/23 can get what they want through sheer force of will, also known as money, which creates its own momentum towards virtually inevitable success. Also don’t expect Kalvin Phillips to go the way of Lee Bowyer. Come May, he could yet be riding an open top bus with a Premier League winner’s medal, a Champions League winner’s medal, heck even a Carabao Cup winner’s medal, with enough games to his name in the second half of the season to make his celebrations mean something. And if not this season, there’s always next season. Or the one after that. He has a six year contract, a lot of time to put right a week’s missed training.

But it’s Phillips having his reputation dragged in public right now — justified or not — and finding, by chasing the reward of a World Cup spot, that the punishments for taking his dreaming further than his hometown horizons just keep mounting up. Imagine his sad little plate at the family Christmas celebrations, the knowing looks and attempted jokes about Pep’s orders. And of all the games he might miss, for the crime of being a week behind on his training weight, it’s Leeds United at Elland Road, the match he said he and Erling Haaland have been looking forward to the most. Of course, he might have found this match a bitter pill anyway — the inevitable booing of even favourite sons for their temerity fleeing the nest, the schadenfreude for how that’s going. You can hardly make a triumphant return to a place where people are laughing at your mistaken ambition, or your waistline.

He’ll get over it. The basic substance to this festive news cycle froth is that Phillips needs a week in the gym before knuckling down to work. If we’re talking about being in the right place, Phillips is there, if what he wants are trophies and medals to put on his sideboard and admire when his playing days are done. And it’s only at the end that a player can do his true accounting — see Messi and Ronaldo for examples of how long it can take to determinate a fate. Phillips might find, as he tells the story of his career to his grandkids, that one afternoon in October 2019 always stands out, when he was rewarded for swapping his choccy cakes for God’s instruction. But when your dreams come true before you’re 27 you either give up or look for new ones, even if they lead you astray.