Forever Blue With Toby Camplin: City Stars Hope To Shine At World Cup

I’d like to start by introducing myself. My name is Toby Camplin, I’m a university student and budding journalist with a passion for Manchester City.

I go to as many games as possible, home and away. The man who usually writes the Forever Blue column, Ian Cheeseman, has taken a well earned break so I will be filling in over the next few weeks. It’s a rather unusual time for football as this is the stage of the season where the topic of discussion is the incoming heavy fixture list over the Christmas period. However, there’s no Premier League, the players are in Qatar and the sound of ‘It’s Coming Home’ can be heard all over the country. Over the next few weeks, I will be following our boys in blue and how they’re getting on at this years World Cup.

Let’s start with our home nation, England. As a devout Man City and national team fan, I’m very proud to say that the England squad has more City players than any other club from the Premier League and beyond. If you haven’t seen the squad, our contribution to the England team is John Stones, Kyle Walker, Kalvin Phillips, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish. However, only one made the starting XI for the opener in Group B against Iran on Monday, that being Stones. Despite this, the three lions displayed an impressive performance, outclassing and dominating the underdogs with a final scoreline of 6-2. It really was men vs boys at times, silencing the early critics of the national team and giving the nation hope early on in the tournament. Phil Foden and Jack Grealish both made appearances in the second half. Grealish made his impact clear, netting in his opening appearance at the competition in the 90th minute, a goal that City fans will be happy to hear equals Wayne Rooney’s all time World Cup scoring record! England’s next fixture is against the USA on Friday.

A team who also kicked off their campaign on Monday were the Netherlands, home to City defender, Nathan Ake. The young centre back started alongside Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk and Bayern Munich’s Matthijs de Ligt. The Dutch side subjected Senegal to a 2-0 defeat on Monday, with the all important clean sheet in tact. 

The final team with any City players in their squad who have begun their campaign as I write this are Argentina, who played Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Julian Alvarez, a new signing for the season, swapped his sky blue City shirt for a blue Argentinian shirt, like the one worn by our old friend, Sergio Aguero. The opening Group C fixture did not disappoint, throwing up an absolute classic football shock. Argentina took the lead early on, but two early second half goals sunk the South American ship. Alvarez didn’t start the game, however, was substituted on in the 59th minute of the second half. He couldn’t make his impact though, and debatabley one of the greatest shocks in World Cup history ended 2-1 to Saudi Arabia.

As I write this, Germany with Ilkay Gundogan, Spain with Rodri and Aymeric Laporte, Portugal with Ruben Dias, Joao Cancelo and Bernardo Silva, Belgium with Kevin De Bruyne, Brazil with Ederson and Switzerland with Manual Akanji are yet to play their opening fixtures. I cannot go into too much detail on the prospect of these games, however, I wish the remaining blues the best of luck in their opening games!