Declan Rice is expected to be available to start England’s World Cup last-32 tie with DR Congo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The key midfielder was rested for the 2-0 win over Panama<\/a> after taking a heavy blow to the calf in the goalless draw with Ghana<\/a> last Tuesday.<\/p>\n Rice, 27, was unable to complete the full training schedule before the win over Panama, although he did return in time for the team’s final session before travelling to New Jersey.<\/p>\n In Rice’s absence, Thomas Tuchel started with a midfield of Elliot Anderson and Jude Bellingham.<\/p>\n But the England manager is optimistic that the Arsenal midfielder will be available to return to the starting XI for the knockout match against DR Congo in Atlanta.<\/p>\n England manager Tuchel’s biggest injury concerns heading into the knockout rounds are Reece James and Jarell Quansah.<\/p>\n Chelsea full-back James missed the win over Panama after sustaining a hamstring injury against Ghana.<\/p>\n While Tuchel is not ruling out James for the DR Congo game, it is understood the right-back’s return to action is likely to come later in the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Declan Rice is expected to be available to start England’s World Cup last-32 tie with DR Congo on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-731311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}