by Often one or two of the most promising teenagers in Newcastle’s academy are invited to train with Eddie Howe’s first team squad. This experience is part reward and part introduction to the grueling challenges of being a world-class footballer. Too many young people are not returned regularly.
Lewis Miley is a rare exception. The midfielder was only 16 and a few months out of school when he received the summons from Howe last year.
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“The biggest compliment I can give Lewis is that he looked like part of the group straight away,” said the Newcastle manager. “It’s no big feat for someone so young to technically survive within the first team group. Some of the drills we do are very difficult. Lewis survived those drills; that is a very big thing.”
For context, Newcastle’s England Under-21 star Anthony Gordon recently admitted that it took him several months to properly understand Howe’s complex tactical teachings and that, after arriving from Everton last January, he “didn’t he could always understand” exactly what it was. supposed to be doing.
No wonder Howe was struck by Miley’s “brilliant brain” and promptly booked the midfielder who joined Newcastle’s academy as a seven-year-old on the team’s trip to Saudi Arabia for a month’s warm-weather training last Christmas.
Around the time Miley was playing in a friendly against Al-Hilal in Riyadh, Enzo Fernández was helping to turn on the lights for Argentina in Doha. A six-hour drive east across the desert, last winter’s World Cup showcased the skills of the then 21-year-old midfielder. After playing a key role in his country’s victory in the tournament, Fernández was voted the best young player of Qatar 2022 before joining Chelsea from Benfica for £106.8m the following month.
But fast forward to July in Atlanta, Georgia, and Miley eclipsed Fernández during a friendly against Chelsea. Given that a very similar thing would happen last Saturday when Mauricio Pochettino’s side conceded 4-1 on Tyneside, Howe was clearly right to change his mind as the 17-year-old now on loan to a club in the Football League last summer.
When he discussed that decision with his team there was no disagreement, only jokes about their collective uncertainty as to whether the 6ft 2in, terrifying baby-faced ghost had started shaving. Everyone agreed that Miley was “some guy”.
However, four months ago his chances of getting enough game time this season looked slim. Shortly before the trip to North America Italian Sandro Tonali arrived for £55m from Milan and Miley looked out of Howe’s immediate midfield equation with Bruno Guimarães, Sean Longstaff, Joelinton, Joe Willock and Elliot Anderson ahead of him on the departmental roster.
Furthermore, despite making his first competitive senior start in the Carabao Cup win over Manchester City in September, a player currently deployed as a No 8 but expected to change into the glandular fever No 6 afterwards that and he didn’t play again until November.
By then Tonali had been suspended for 10 months for breaches of the betting regulations, Anderson, Willock and Longstaff were injured and Miley, unfazed, took the stage.
As his clever, weighted pass set up Alexander Isak’s opening goal against Chelsea, a star was born. Fernández certainly did not enjoy renewing his acquaintance with a midfielder who, as Howe says, “doesn’t look 17, doesn’t act 17 and doesn’t play 17”.
After another impressive performance during Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at the Parc des Princes – where Miley became the third-youngest Englishman after Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden to start a Champions League game – it is unlikely to agree Paris Saint-Germain players.
It was heartening to see Miley display a 30-year-old noun that still plays with the fearless freedom of a child and Howe’s pride was boosted by the knowledge that such exceptional talent is tempered by a healthy humility and rare emotional maturity.
Miley grew up as one of four brothers in a “very good, very sensible” family from Stanley, a small hill town in County Durham, which was run by a manager. An older and younger sibling are also on Newcastle’s books, under-21s Jamie and under-18s Mason.
Perhaps most significantly, while a pupil at Tanfield School, Lewis spent long hours developing his discipline and his first contact playing in his year group’s title-winning local futsal team. Those qualities should be on display if he makes, as expected, his sixth appearance of the season at home to Manchester United on Saturday night.
“The future will be the judge for Lewis but he had a very early taste of high-level football and has taken everything,” Howe said on Friday. “For someone so young he has a good outlook on life and sport. He is very calm, very polite, very respectful. But he is also keen to show his qualities.”
