According to the BBC Scott Is poised to make his debut in one of the friendlies. He's also fully committed to England
All those who are the on standby players will play. I think Ngumoha, Scott, King, Steele and Nwaneri will play. I’ve repeated it here and elsewhere but Tuchel is very concerned by load management and having players at their peak with no injuries.
Those friendlies are going to be a repeat of March aren’t they. Probably with at least one draw or defeat and then a week of negativity because the mood is already more hostile than it was when we lost to Iceland 2 years ago.
It’s just we have seen what happens when Tuchel experiments to rest players and it’s not a good watch. Maybe he should have been braver and not held proper friendlies and worked out how to compensate ITV. I can’t imagine the March matches were enjoyable to play in either.
Kyle Walker says he would have took Maguire, Shaw and Gibbs-White to the World Cup and is concerned about James and Stones ability to keep fit. He also said Tuchel never phoned him after the Senegal match and ignored his calls. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/39288713/kyle-walker-england-world-cup-squad/ (Stones seems to be turning into another target of the media for some reason with constant reminders of how little he has played this season)
It is going to look a bit ridiculous when Alex Scott comes on and blatantly outperforms Henderson in these friendlies.
This is where the discussion around technique gets interesting. When looking at technical ability. I'd argue that there is a distinction between a Baseline and Ceiling. You mentioned Ben Arfa who's a good example of this. A much higher ceiling than his baseline. The reason I used Gascoigne, is he (like Rooney ) lived a wreckless lifestyle with drinking problems, plus career injuries (which Rooney never had). But Gascoigne had that generational high ceiling and a technical baseline which was still very high, even if not extraordinary. And Gascoigne undoubtedly had both a higher baseline AND ceiling than Rooney. And going by those two metric's (combined), even in spite of Gascoigne's poor lifestyle, he still remains the most technically rounded footballer England has ever produced. Outside of striking the ball, Rooney had a baseline which was ok, and a ceiling which was a lot higher than his baseline (teenage Rooney's ceiling was enormous). And this is why I believe his touch often looked so 'off' when he lost his early athleticism - he didn't have that technical baseline to fall back on..like a Paul Scholes or a Harry Kane. Although I do agree that his poor lifestyle shortened the lifecycle of the young ceiling monster Rooney from 2004, and was already gone as early as 2008-2009. Another interesting thing about technical baseline is that it's the one area of technical discourse, where there's been an obvious gap between English footballers and players from elite producers like Spain and (historically) Holland. We've been well aware of it since the 80s and it's remained the topic thats haunted us almost every two yrs after a tournament exit; "why can't we produce players who are as secure under pressure as [insert random country]" However it is also the one area where we've made the biggest improvements over the past 10-15 yrs since overhauling youth academies. England never had as much of an issue producing high ceiling players like Rooney, Waddle, John Barnes, Gerrard, Gascoigne etc. It's the output with that elite technical baseline where we've historically come up short. And thankfully, recent cohorts have produced more players with a really high baseline than all previous combined; Foden, Palmer, Mainoo, Bellingham, Dowman, Saka, Musiala, Olise and possibly Wharton and Gibbs White etc. It's a key reason why I dont think Tuchel was the right successor to Southgate to build on Englands football identity - but that's another discussion.
Well then there's the complete football freaks that fall into the category of combining both top end baseline and top-end ceiling, like Messi, Zidane, Maradona and Van Basten. However these players are generational one-offs and more importantly, history has shown they're not an absolute necessity for winning tournaments. I'd personally have Ronaldo R9, Ronaldinho and Cristiano in the category of having super high ceiling, but not the super high technical baseline of Xavi, Modric or Pirlo. What makes Messi and Zidane and Maradona so special is they rank so high in both
R9 was the most technically gifted player of his era. He was also the best player in the world for a few years
He certainly had the highest ceiling in the world, during the mid-late 90s, when he was at Inter Milan.
Can we at least wait until a ball is kicked before deciding whether to continue with this one-man mission to dampen everybody's hopes and enthusiasm?
I would say it might be politically shall we say, useful, to have France and Spain as heavy favourites even though we're near or near enough as good as they are. It takes the heat off the players mentally and allows tuchel a bit of leeway to set the tone and control the narrative somewhat.
Croatia lost 2-0 to Belgium in a friendly. I don't get the hype about Croatia being a potential world beater when their best players are all in their 30s (Modric is also 40).
If we played either France or Spain right now, it would probably look very similar to how Arsenal and PSG played out with us Arsenal. Not saying we couldn’t win on the day but I think either France or Spain beat us 7 or 8 times out of 10.
That is a good idea but I’m not sure Tuchel is going to be given the leeway to set the tone. There is not a lot of space in the game between The team plays pretty well and people get excited or ans the team plays bad and people get depressed/angry.
Jordan Henderson doesn’t seem to think he will play much. https://talksport.com/football/world-cup/4302406/jordan-henderson-england-role-world-cup/