England manager Thomas Tuchel has defended his full-back selection policy after confirming Reece James will miss Saturday’s World Cup match against Panama.<\/p>\n
As revealed by BBC Sport this week, James was assessed by England medics following Tuesday’s goalless draw against Ghana after complaining of a hamstring issue.<\/p>\n
Tuchel has since confirmed that the Chelsea right-back has not travelled to New Jersey from their Kansas City base for their final Group L game against Panama on Saturday (22:00 BST). But he insists James has a chance of playing in England’s possible last-32 match next week.<\/p>\n
However, BBC Sport understands that James is a significant doubt for the start of the knockout stages, should England qualify.<\/p>\n
James’ injury \u2013 and the calf issue that caused Tino Livramento to return home from the United States \u2013 has thrown into question Tuchel’s decision to bring just three recognised full-backs to the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Djed Spence, James and Livramento were the only genuine full-backs selected.<\/p>\n
Nico O’Reilly, who played at left-back for Manchester City last season, is also in the squad \u2013 but he came through the ranks at Etihad Stadium as a midfielder. Dan Burn has also played at left-back but is recognised as a centre-back.<\/p>\n
Spence and central defenders Jarell Quansah and Ezri Konsa are Tuchel’s alternative options at right-back.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Tuchel said: “Yes, I am [happy with my options at right-back]. I selected the team, so I’m very happy with everything with the characteristic of the players and strengths that they give us.<\/p>\n
“We would love to have every single key player, we would love to have them available, it’s not available \u2013 we find solutions, it’s what we do. It’s a tournament, we move on.”<\/p>\n
James and Livramento, in particular, have a chequered injury history and Tuchel’s decision to take both to the World Cup is likely to be called into question.<\/p>\n
Tuchel, though, is confident James will play again in the World Cup should England progress.<\/p>\n
“It’s a minor hamstring issue, he’s not been able to train the last two days,” confirmed Tuchel.<\/p>\n
“He’s now on an accelerated rehabilitation program and we take it game by game, but we strongly believe that he will be available [during the tournament].”<\/p>\n
There was better news with regards to the availability of Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson, who Tuchel said would all be available to face Panama.<\/p>\n
Rice (calf) and Anderson (glute) missed training on Thursday \u2013 but returned on Friday.<\/p>\n
Tuchel confirmed Saka is ready to start after coming off the bench in the opening two matches because of a long-term Achilles tendinitis complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England manager Thomas Tuchel has defended his full-back selection policy after confirming Reece James will miss Saturday’s World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-762780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762780","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=762780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}