England have called up Arsenal right-back Ben White for upcoming friendlies following an injury suffered by Bayer Leverkusen center back Jarell Quansah, with Thomas Tuchel again overlooking Real Madrid’s Trent Alexander-Arnold.<\/p>\n
Newcastle United’s Harvey Barnes has also been added to the 35-man squad with Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze injured. But it \u2060was White’s addition that drew the most attention, given that he has not featured for England since 2022 amid reports of a falling out with the former coaching staff.<\/p>\n
White, 28, has four caps for England but none since leaving the team’s camp in Qatar after playing against Ivory Coast in March 2022. Personal reasons were cited at the time, but there were reports that White made himself unavailable during the remainder of Gareth Southgate’s tenure.<\/p>\n
Barnes’ lone previous appearance with the senior team came in October 2020. He is Newcastle’s second leading scorer with 14 goals across all competitions this \u200cseason, and Scotland had been hoping \u2060to convince the winger to join their World Cup squad.<\/p>\n
Thomas Tuchel, who took over as England manager in late 2024, chose to select White for matches against Uruguay on Friday and Japan next Tuesday despite him having started only five Premier League matches for Arsenal this season. Meanwhile, Real Madrid’s starting right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold did not get the call.<\/p>\n
Alexander-Arnold has played only \u200conce under Tuchel, who was asked if the omission from this squad makes it highly unlikely that the 27-year-old will make the World Cup squad.<\/p>\n
“No. I know that \u2060it is a tough decision for Trent as it is for, I guess, for Ollie Watkins, at \u200cthe moment, and for Luke Shaw,” Tuchel said. “These tough decisions come with the job.”<\/p>\n
Tuchel, \u2060who is without \u200cthe injured Reece James, noted thedepth that England has at right fullback while adding that he feelscomfortable with what players such as Watkins can provide to the club throughprevious tournaments and qualifiers.<\/p>\n
“I know it’s a tough one, I know (Arnold-Alexander) is \u2060a big name,” Tuchel said. “I think that he’s a huge talent with a big career, but I feel like \u2060I know what Trent can give us and decided to still to stick to the players who were in camp with us.<\/p>\n
“It is more the evidence that we have that we were good in September, October, November, than it has anything to do with what Trent can not offer. I know very well what Trent can offer us. I played many times against him and suffered, and suffered when he played against us \u200cagainst my teams with Liverpool. So, I know very well about his strengths and what he can give.”<\/p>\n
Watch Czechia v Republic of Ireland on Thursday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app or listen to commentary on Inside Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England have called up Arsenal right-back Ben White for upcoming friendlies following an injury suffered by Bayer Leverkusen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-361821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}