It is April 2019 and Phil Foden is making his full Premier League debut for Manchester City against Cardiff City.

The talented teenager has already made several starts in the domestic cups and by every estimation is destined to become a superstar. He is just two years away from receiving the first of three Ballon d’Or nominations.

Early in the second period, Foden receives the ball on the half-turn just advanced of the centre-circle. There are two opposition players in close proximity. The midfielder cushions the pass into his stride-path, to allow him to accelerate onto the ball. But a Cardiff player sticks out a long leg and clears it to safety.

It is a small, inconsequential moment amidst a hundred passages of play in that fixture but it stays with the young Mancunian and is noticed by his manager, Pep Guardiola.

That summer a sprint coach for the Liverpool Harriers Athletic Club is drinking coffee in the city’s Metquarter and he is informing his friend that Phil Foden’s running mechanics are all wrong. The friend knows the City star and arrangements are made.

Tony Clarke is the coach’s name and eight sessions are set up, the objective being to fundamentally alter the footballer’s running style.

In January 2022, Clarke spoke to Goal.com and revealed what this entailed.

“His stride was too long. He needed to shorten it so that his foot landed underneath his body, underneath his hips.

If you overstride, you land on your heel. So, essentially your foot stays on the floor for too long. I felt if he could change from a heel-striker into a front-of-the-foot striker, it’d add so much.”

In addition to this, it was perceived that Foden pumped his arms too soon, essentially at the point of ignition. Clarke showed him video footage of NFL players, how they adapted their position first before ‘igniting’ into a sprint. By doing this they could generate power primarily from their quads, hamstrings, and glutes and not the arms.

Two games after football’s long hiatus for a worldwide pandemic Foden scores twice against Burnley and calls Clarke post-match. “I felt like a rocket out there,” he exclaims.

Data box – In seven Champions League outings in 2025/26, Foden covered 71.43km, averaging 6.8km per game. He reached a top speed of 32.93km/h.

A Surge of Electricity: Physical Necessities and Unlocking Them

Building athletic power and utilising it in an explosive manner is a huge plus for any sports star and perhaps especially so for creatives, charged with taking on players and bursting into space.

It is a subject matter that has long fascinated Joel Smith, a NCAA Division 1 strength coach who has authored books on the topic, and he explains what physical requirements are necessary to fully optimise such power.  

"The expression of power in elite athletes is something special to watch. There isn’t a single factor that creates power, but rather a combination of abilities working together. Two of the most important are a high proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibres relative to slow-twitch, and a nervous system that can fire quickly and forcefully. Using a car analogy, these represent the horsepower of the engine.

The other side of power is how that engine is expressed, more like the transmission and steering. This includes the quality of connective tissues such as tendons, skeletal structure, coordination, and overall body awareness. Athletes who are naturally fast tend to have some combination of more fast-twitch fibres, a faster signalling nervous system, and better coordination and control.”

Focusing on stride control and step mechanics – as Foden did that summer - facilitates a more explosive take-off but as with almost every aspect of strength and conditioning a holistic approach should always be adhered to. So it is that agility drills, undertaken on an almost daily basis at the Etihad Campus, heightens the impact of the power Foden can now generate quickly.

Furthermore, shuttle runs, tuck jumps and ladder shuffles remain fundamental elements to Foden’s training, as well as box drills that see him run backwards to one cone, sideways to another and sprint to the last, then repeat.

Anticipation Key: Be Pro-active, Not Reactive

Beyond these basics, intangible, instinctive skills are honed too, skills the player will have worked on since first joining Manchester City as a very young boy, but which improve over time.

It can be argued that Foden takes a better line now to before, angling his runs not based on his immediate surroundings but by anticipating the weight and direction of pass coming his way. And when it does, he receives on balance, so no adjustments are necessary.

All of the above decreases the need for a sidestep, a strength of Foden’s but one that reduces his chances of winning the first three steps. Win those first three steps and odds on you have broke through, in possession, and in space.

It is pertinent to note at this juncture that 90% of sprints in football last less than five seconds. No attacking player needs to match an Olympic sprinter over 100 metres. They need velocity and power from a standing start.

It is November 2025 and Manchester City are hosting Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League. We are an hour deep into the contest and Phil Foden has already scored twice, both of them planted brilliantly into the far bottom corner of the net.

The six-time Premier League winner receives the ball on the half-turn just advanced of the centre-circle with two opposition players nearby. He takes a touch and bursts past them, leaving them in his wake.

It is a small moment, amidst a hundred passages of play but an awful lot of work has gone into it.