Ben Foster doesn’t watch football on TV but he knows the Match of the Day panel labelled him England’s best goalkeeper last weekend because his mum and dad told him.

What makes Foster’s form at Watford this season most remarkable, though, is that he almost quit the game last summer.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Foster said this week. ‘I did think about retiring, definitely. I had been at West Brom too long. It was monotonous and I reached a point where I asked myself, “Do I really want this anymore?”

Ben Foster almost retired from football last summer but is glad he instead moved to Watford

‘I was dead scared when Watford came in. I was like, “Do I need the stress of a new challenge? Can I do the commute?” All this stuff.

‘Meeting a whole new team of players, making friends, strapping a smile on and going in there and being this experienced goalkeeper that everybody thinks you are. A room full of 30 blokes you don’t know, it’s tough, intimidating.

‘But I jumped in head first. Luckily I settled in so quickly. I am so glad I came, so glad I am still playing.’ To understand the above you have to know a little bit about Foster, a goalkeeper who loves playing but hates training, who would rather be at home on the sofa than away with his team, who can hold a room with his personality but has spent chunks of his career beholden to insecurity.

He is 35 now and has perspective. His career has been eclectic. He has played non-League football and for Manchester United and England. But to him football has always been a job, a way to provide for his wife and two children. ‘I know that sounds bad but it’s just the truth,’ he said.

Foster loves life at Watford. You can tell from his play and his countenance when you meet him.

Having once said the trick is to find a ‘balance between having ambition and having a life’, it now appears he is straddling the line. With that has come some of the best form of his career.

‘In the last couple of years I have grown a lot as a goalie and as a bloke,’ he explained. ‘I am super happy in my own skin. I know what I can and can’t do.

‘We were at Tottenham recently in the middle of a big game, but I could look around and think, “Yeah, this is decent. I am enjoying this”, and that was great.’

It is rare to hear a footballer speak about vulnerability and doubt. Too much of what we hear is curated and covered in layers of bluff. But Foster has views on player welfare and mental health and speaks from experience. 

He thinks a huge number of players are fundamentally unhappy, drowning under the weight of pressure and the miserable influence of social media. He has been there himself, fretful and low on self-esteem during his difficult years at Old Trafford.

‘There is so much pressure and stress in football that young players don’t have chance to soak it in and enjoy it,’ he said. ‘They come off the field and they are straight on their phones to see the reaction and it’s a total mind-f*** of stuff.

Former Manchester United and England ace Foster spoke exclusively to Sportsmail this week

‘I know so many players who are world-beaters in training but dread Saturday and you can see it in them as the week wears on. They shrink. You need to lose the fear factor, especially as a goalie. If you can’t, then you are in trouble and I know because I have had it.

‘It’s hard to pinpoint a moment when it kind of clicked for me. It’s to do with age maybe but there is definitely stuff I could have done with learning. Maybe I missed a trick.

‘Look at Ederson at Man City. He doesn’t seem to give a s***. It could be the 90th minute of the most important game in the world and he would still take a touch on his six-yard line and Cruyff somebody. Maybe it’s inbuilt but if you don’t have it then you have to learn it. You are not fearful in training but as soon as you step on a pitch in front of 50,000 people that’s when the pressure starts to hit. You just can’t play like that.

‘Thankfully I have things in the right order now. I can’t stand training but I love the buzz of playing. I’ve worked it all out, finally.’

Foster tells a nice and typically self-deprecating story of his time at Manchester United. For weeks he would be pestered for autographs by a young, snappily-dressed kid at a chip shop near his house in the Cheshire village of Holmes Chapel.

Years later, Foster and his wife saw him on TV. The kid had grown to become someone rather famous, Harry Styles of One Direction.

‘I have never heard from him since,’ says Foster, laughing. ‘Like most United fans, he probably can’t remember me!’

One Direction star Harry Styles used to pester Foster for an autograph at a Cheshire chip shop 

Foster won two League Cups at Manchester United but ultimately could not settle there

Foster had only played 17 Football League games for Wrexham when United signed him in 2005. It is perhaps no wonder it didn’t work out. He had just turned 22 when Sir Alex Ferguson saw him play alongside his son Darren in the LDV Vans Trophy final.

‘Darren said United wanted to sign me,’ recalled Foster. ‘My head just went boom. I was like, “Why?” Even when I had signed I was convinced they would see me in training and realise they had made an absolute f***-up. At United, the pressure was incredible and I just was not ready.’

Foster spent two happy seasons on loan from United at Watford between 2005 and 2007 and it was at his current club that he met the psychologist Keith Minchin.

The young goalkeeper thrived, but back at Old Trafford for the following two seasons his United career fell apart on the back of high-profile mistakes, most notably in a 4-3 derby win over City at Old Trafford in September 2009.

‘That was the end of my career there, really,’ he said. ‘The manager has absolutely gone at me, so I knew then I wasn’t playing again. That was horrible.

‘It was a few four-letter words. “That’s you. You’re done”. Then there is some more and you are like, “Oh s***, it’s still coming”.

‘I was not great at dealing with that back then and it was horrible but then you learn from it and realise it’s brilliant.

‘That wasn’t even the worst b********* I got from Fergie, by the way. I took a penalty in a shoot-out on a pre-season tour to South Africa and I missed it. He went mental about that!’

Foster is happy now but the keeper endured some tough times during his spell at Old Trafford

Foster speaks positively about his years at Old Trafford, about learning from Edwin van der Sar — ‘World class and a top-class bloke with it’ — and watching Cristiano Ronaldo train longer and harder than anybody else.

‘He didn’t give a s*** what other people thought, he just did it,’ revealed Foster.

He is happy to accept that maybe he was just not cut out for the demands of life at the very top. He blames nobody but himself.

‘When I was back in the Man United goldfish bowl, there was nothing like that,’ he said. ‘It all felt very cut-throat and you just had to survive at all costs.

‘They sold me to Birmingham and I couldn’t wait to go. I think Sir Alex knew that mentally I wasn’t right for the place.

‘Had you asked me a season after I left, I may still have had a bit of bitterness. But as you get older you can’t hang on to that.

‘You realise that everyone has their own s*** going on and you just move on to the next thing. I am chuffed with the way things have worked out.’

Ex-United star Edwin van der Sar was ‘world class and a top-class bloke’, according to Foster

Foster is in incredible form this season but says he will not add to his eight England senior caps

Foster has made more saves than any keeper in Premier League history. That says he has been doing something right or that he is getting on a bit. Probably a bit of both. Despite three major knee injuries, his form now is better than it has ever been and he is an infectious, effervescent presence when we meet at Watford’s training ground.

There will be no England recall and he doesn’t want one. He is happy with his eight caps.

‘I am too old and Gareth is going with young ones and that’s right,’ he added. ‘And international weeks are where I need the break. I don’t like training, don’t want to be out there. It just bores me, to be honest, and it hurts as well.

‘I do give it all my all but when it’s international break I get five or six days and me and the missus and the kids will go away somewhere warm. I have been doing it for the last three or four years and I have missed two games.

‘Mum and dad told me what they said on TV and that’s nice, but it doesn’t matter at all. We are blessed with English goalies at the moment. They don’t need me.’

At Watford, they tease Foster and he loves it. They tease him for his obsession with cycling and his contempt for the modern footballer’s lifestyle.

Foster made eight England appearances from 2007 to 2014 but does not expect another cap

Centre forward and captain Troy Deeney told a fans’ forum this week: ‘The guy eats s***, trains twice a week, turns up on a Saturday and is f****** unbelievable.’

As it turns out, that is not far from the truth. Foster was the same during seven years at West Brom. Just doing enough. At United, he loathed the treadmill of the game at the very highest level.

‘Gary Neville ran that ship,’ he says, smiling. ‘Good, bad and indifferent, you just heard his voice all the time. Usually moaning!

‘Football, football, football. That was all they knew or wanted to know. Fair play to them as they were great at it.’

On the one hand it feels strange that Foster never excelled for a really top club. On the other it doesn’t matter. Under coach Javi Gracia, Watford are upwardly mobile, eighth in the Premier League table.

Foster doesn’t know what retirement will bring or when it will come. More cycling, certainly, and perhaps some skiing. He fancies America’s MLS, too.

What he does know is that he would like the sport he loves to improve in its care of its most precious commodities.

Foster has been in good form this season and has helped Watford climb as high as eighth

Asked if he thinks most footballers are ultimately happy he said: ‘There are very few, honestly. Nobody has taught them to deal with setbacks.

‘When things go wrong, they have to strap on that persona of, “This is me, I am big and I have money, look at my car”.

‘That’s just to compensate for that other bit that they are not willing to open up about and talk about. The self-doubt.

‘I guarantee you it’s a dangerous thing. And a psychologist doesn’t always want to get a young footballer and open up his head, because then he has to worry about having to put him together again.

‘There just isn’t enough psychological work done with players. It’s as simple as that.’

For Foster, this is no longer a live issue. He is near the end and that has delivered a sense of freedom. He is usually at training first and back home in the Midlands in time for the school pick-up.

‘I love that Virgin train,’ he says. ‘I love getting home, doing the school run and that’s it. I am home and I ain’t doing anything. I ain’t going anywhere.

‘The kids are in bed at 8pm and we are buzzing to get in bed and watch something on Netflix. That’s it. Perfect.’

Family man Foster lives in the Midlands but travels south to train with his Watford team-mates