The season may be in its infancy but Morgan Rogers already has quite the showreel. His performance against Arsenal a week ago led to clips of him wringing Declan Rice inside out and putting Thomas Partey on all fours going viral. With a telling smile and victory secured Mikel Arteta was able to acknowledge the suffering Rogers caused his players. Pundits and punters were left eulogising about Rogers’s robustness and running power. “It has been a bit mad,” the Aston Villa forward says of the fallout. “I am a terrible loser, sore loser, everything, so my initial reaction coming off the pitch was disappointment and then the buzz I felt from my teammates, media and family after the game made me think: ‘Maybe I did better than I thought.’ It was a weird spot to be in that evening.”
Analysing the game, Jamie Redknapp compared Rogers to “Jonah Lomu in his prime” while admiring footage of him brushing off Gabriel Martinelli, gobbling up ground and beckoning Partey to tackle him, only for Rogers to ease him aside before sending a shot narrowly wide. The exciting thing for Villa is that, after half an hour in Rogers’ company, it is clear he believes there is much more to come. “I’ve had to work on my confidence … so thinking that I can be the best player on the pitch at any given time or day, no matter who is playing. Of course, there are world-class players in every game we play, even just on my team. But ‘Why not me?’ is the mindset I’ve adopted, especially this year. ‘Why can’t I be the best player on the pitch today and show what I’m about as well?’”
How has he got to this point? “Teammates giving me confidence, the manager giving me so much trust and belief,” he says of Unai Emery. The story goes that when Villa analysts scouted Middlesbrough before the teams met in the FA Cup in January they liked what they saw. So did Emery, who spied potential in a player Boro bought from Manchester City six months earlier. It helped that Villa’s academy manager, Mark Harrison, and the head of talent identification, Steve Hopcroft, worked with Rogers at West Brom, the club he joined aged eight. Rogers impressed Emery in the game and Villa crystallised their interest, eventually agreeing an £8m deal. It was a big jump and, regardless of his pedigree, few predicted Rogers would make such a splash so quickly.
“The responsibilities he’s given me have just got bigger and bigger,” Rogers says. “When I was younger, I’d let games and opportunities pass me by because I was trying to play the game … not too nice but I was not fully showing what I’m about and just showing glimpses. Now I don’t want to waste a second on the pitch. As long as I’ve got that mindset, then I know I can get to that level. I have shown it this season but I still want to go to another level and get better and better.”
Villa entered a different sphere this season after qualifying for the Champions League; Rogers remembers mimicking the anthem in school but next month it will become a reality. “You joke about it with your friends when you’re younger … to walk out to it will be a pinch-myself and surreal moment,” he says. Arguably Villa’s most alluring European ties promise to be those at home to Bayern Munich, Celtic and Juventus. “My family were texting me as the draw was going on, saying who we got. It was a feelgood moment. It’s what you dream of, it’s what I’ve worked towards, it’s where I want to be, it’s where I feel I should be.”
Rogers often trained with City’s first team but although he played in a friendly alongside Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland he left without a competitive appearance. He was loaned to Lincoln, Blackpool and Bournemouth and was part of the City team that beat Chelsea to win the FA Youth Cup in 2019-20, alongside Cole Palmer, who remains a good friend. The pair roomed together through the age groups with England. “Before every camp we’d always text the [administrative] person that we’d want to be in the same room,” he chuckles.
In eight months Rogers has swapped the Championship for the Champions League. Now he, like Palmer, is generating attention. “I have been patiently waiting,” says Rogers with a wry smile. As a youngster at West Brom he duelled with Jude Bellingham, then playing a year up for Birmingham, three or four times a season and later played with him for his country. Noni Madueke is another former England youth teammate. Rogers made his England Under-21s debut in March.
“I knew Cole could get to the top level … it’s an element of pride when you grow up together and I’m sure he feels the same for me, especially over the last year. Even before then he was always asking me how I played, even in the games nobody knew about in the Championship or League One … It is good to have someone like that because before coming into the Premier League I knew everything about it through his lens. We would talk through games.”
It was not always easy watching peers excel. “You’re happy for them, but at the same time you’re itching, you’re like: ‘I want to be in that position, I want to play in the big games.’” He says, though, that he would not change his path “for a second”.
Pep Guardiola spoke with Rogers in the tunnel after City beat Villa in April. “It was like a sense of relief [for him]. Everything he knew I had, he saw it in me. It didn’t quite work when I was there but he saw it here and that was kind of a big thing for me because it showed how far I’d come, how I’d worked it out and got better and grown up. That will stick with me because it was like I’d finally done what he saw, what he wanted. It [being at City] might not have been the most successful part of my career but it helped mould and develop me into the player I am now.”
The 22-year-old speaks with a maturity that belies his years. He has multiple tattoos, including one on his left forearm that details the birthdays of his parents and three brothers. “That is my favourite one, my most sentimental one,” he says. Rogers’ tight relationship with his family was illustrated when his mother, Deborah, and youngest brother surprised him at a supporters’ event in New York’s Times Square during Villa’s pre-season tour. Rogers lives with one of his brothers, Daniel, a therapist, and spent a chunk of the summer working daily on his fitness with another, Ash, an individual coach, Stateside and then in Portugal.
The most striking thing about Rogers is his imposing, broad-shouldered 6ft 3in frame. He can play across the front line but is at his best driving at opponents, breaking between lines. “Coming here, I saw some of the players we’ve got in the changing room that are just a different breed, different animals … I thought: ‘I need to be able to match that.’ At first, training was a shock to me, games were a shock. I knew I had to kick on and I feel like I’ve done that.”
Was the aim to be stronger? “Stronger, more muscle, fitter, everything – the lot. I wanted to be quicker. I didn’t want to start the season building up speed, I wanted to hit the ground running. I was itching to go after missing the last few games of last season [because of a hamstring injury].” He hired a chef to help with his diet. “Nutrition-wise, I’m eating a lot better, much healthier.”
Michael Appleton, who signed Rogers on loan at Lincoln and Blackpool, says Rogers is a rarity as an attacking player who relishes the physical side. “I prefer it,” Rogers says. “The way I play and where I want to play on the pitch, there is going to be contact and traffic around me, so to be able to feel pressure and turn away from it is something I pride myself on.”
Five months on from his full Villa debut, at Ajax in the Europa Conference League, and three years on from League One trips to Bristol Rovers and Burton, he is embracing the big time. The biggest stage still awaits. “That’s how quickly football can change,” Rogers says. “It is mad to know where I’ve got to in a short space of time but that is also what motivates me to think: ‘Where can I be in another year or three years?’ I don’t just want to stop here.”
