What is the reason behind Phil Foden's consistent use of a bandage on his hand?

You may have overlooked it, but Phil Foden has been playing with his hand strapped up for the past few months.

Foden's right hand and wrist has been bandaged up for almost the whole of 2024, including when he lifted the Premier League trophy with Manchester City, all through Euro 2024 with England, and into the new season.

So what has led the midfielder to wear that support over the past few months It's not just there for show or out of any kind of superstition - or at the very least, it wasn't to begin with.

Phil Foden has followed the likes of Karim Benzema and Jamie Vardy with a bandage around his hand

Foden fractured his hand/finger sometime between City's 3-1 home win over Burnley on January 31 this year and their victory away to Brentford by the same scoreline on February 5, when he wore the bandage for the first time.

The bandage covers his wrist, hand and middle two fingers, and Foden has kept it wrapped up since then. Teammate Ruben Dias coincidentally suffered a fracture around the same time, with both players playing through the pain for the rest of the season.

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We presume that Foden still requires the bandage to keep wearing it to this day: it can take months for a hand fracture to fully heal, particularly as he has been playing throughout and will inevitably have landed on it a few times in the interim.

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Karim Benzema started wearing a bandage for a similar injury in 2019 and still wears it to this day. He explained in 2021 that he still needed to wear it, as getting it surgically corrected to let it heal fully required a two-month layoff that he did not feel it was worth taking.