{"id":917580,"date":"2026-11-14T23:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T23:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/917580\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T23:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T23:18:09","slug":"ben-white-declan-rice-defends-arsenal-team-mate-after-boos-at-wembley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/917580\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben White: Declan Rice defends Arsenal team-mate after boos at Wembley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Declan Rice has defended <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/arsenal\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Arsenal<\/a> team-mate Ben White after the defender was booed at Wembley during England&#8217;s 2-1 win over Croatia on Thursday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">White, who came on as a substitute in the Nations League fixture, left the Three Lions&#8217; camp at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to return home for personal reasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He then made himself unavailable for selection for the rest of Gareth Southgate&#8217;s reign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">White was also booed by some fans in March&#8217;s 1-1 draw with Ukraine after returning to the squad under Thomas Tuchel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The incident with Ben was over five years ago, I don&#8217;t know why it is still a conversation to be honest,&#8221; Rice told BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Knowing Ben, knowing the character he is, he has totally moved on from all of that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He always wears the shirt with pride and every time he puts on the shirt, he gives 100 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It shows his character. It is not easy being booed coming on at Wembley, but to show his mental strength to play the game and to play well, like he did in the previous months, is a real testament to him.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rice also said that the players do not discuss the situation at all and that everybody has moved on, adding that White has &#8220;an exciting future ahead with this England squad&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Before the game, White said that people did not know the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c6rmym3p419no\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;full story&#8221;<\/a> behind his departure from Qatar but that he still backed his decision. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Declan Rice has defended Arsenal team-mate Ben White after the defender was booed at Wembley during England&#8217;s 2-1&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-917580","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\/917580","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=917580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}