Ben Foster has admitted he may be forced to consider his future at Manchester United should he fail to break into the first team at Old Trafford next season if he is to retain any hope of securing a place in Fabio Capello's England squad for next summer's World Cup finals in South Africa.
The goalkeeper was called up by the Italian for Saturday's friendly against Slovakia and next week's qualifier against Ukraine largely on the back of a fine performance in last month's Carling Cup final, in which he kept a clean sheet and then saved a penalty from Jamie O'Hara in the decisive shoot-out. Yet his impact at Old Trafford since a £1m move from Stoke City in 2005 has been limited by injury and the excellence of the club's veteran No1, Edwin van der Sar. It is now over a year since he made his only Premier League appearance for the champions.
"It's a bit of a fine line for me," admitted the uncapped Foster. "I'm at Manchester United and I want to be there for as long as I can be but there comes a moment when I do want to be playing also. I've got no desire to move away but, on the other hand, I've got ambitions. I want to do things in my career. I'm not happy just to sit around and be the No2 goalkeeper, so I'll see what happens. It's a balancing act, really, but you have to be playing to go to a World Cup finals. You can't expect to go to the biggest competition in the world having not been playing regular football.
"It's frustrating not playing regularly but you probably get only one chance at being at United and you've got to give it your all. And it's a difficult one, too, when you've got Edwin in front of you doing so well. It's quite hard to knock on the manager's door and say: 'Give me a chance please, boss' when he's kept 14 consecutive clean sheets. I'm 25 and I've still got a long time to go in my career so, hopefully, it will just be a case of sitting tight and biding my time. I will start again next season and see what goes from there. But, with the World Cup coming up next year, there'll be a lot of English players who want to be picked in the squad and involved. We will just have to come to that when it's the case. I'm going to start next season, give it my all and see what happens."
Foster, the seventh keeper called up by Capello, has not played for United since the Carling Cup final and has still made only seven appearances for the club since arriving from the Britannia Stadium. Indeed, the majority of first-team football he has enjoyed in recent seasons was during two spells at Watford, though Sir Alex Ferguson preferred not to send him out again on a temporary move this term. Talks over a new four-year contract are expected to begin in the summer – the player has 15 months to run on his current deal – though Foster is anxious to have made more impact in the first-team at Old Trafford by Christmas to keep alive his hopes of travelling with England to South Africa."It was up to Fergie that I spent this season at United," added Foster, who is the seventh goalkeeper called up by Capello since he took up the reins with the national squad. "A loan move was never really a question to be honest. He's a very good man manager. He tells the players what he's thinking, what he expects of them, and his plans for the future. At the end of the day he's got to pick a United team that's going to go out there and win games. Edwin kept 14 [consecutive] clean sheets [in the Premier League]. You can't really go knocking on the manager's door when the goalkeeper in front of you is doing that."
