England’s 0-0 draw with Ghana<\/a> on Tuesday, and he was missing from group training before the squad’s departure to New York.<\/p>\nThe 26-year-old was following an individual programme inside the training base in Kansas City but was not on the pitch with the rest of his team-mates.<\/p>\n
Jarell Quansah, Djed Spence and Ezri Konsa are head coach Thomas Tuchel’s alternative options at right-back.<\/p>\n
James is a key player for England and Tuchel will hope that the issue is not something that will keep him out of the tournament in the longer term.<\/p>\n
Rice left the Boston Stadium after the Ghana draw with strapping on his left calf and missed training on Thursday – but it was felt the knock just needed rest.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal midfielder is expected to be available for the Panama game on Saturday (22:00 BST).<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen if Tuchel is willing to start Rice, though, as he is at risk of suspension for the round of 32 after he was booked against Ghana.<\/p>\n
Rice’s midfield partner Elliot Anderson – poised for a \u00a3116m move from Nottingham Forest to Manchester City – was another who was absent from England’s session on Thursday, but he was present on Friday.<\/p>\n
England can secure top spot in Group L and then plot their route through the knockout stages with a win over Panama.<\/p>\n
At Panama’s training on Friday, two players had to be separated after a physical altercation where they were seen shoving each other.<\/p>\n
Cecilio Waterman and Jos\u00e9 Luis Rodr\u00edguez were forced apart by teammates at the session at Montclair State University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Declan Rice returned to England training on Friday but Reece James missed the session as doubt remained about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-762301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}