The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me Matt Davis-Adams.

We're into the final international break before this summer's World Cup.

Harry McGuire and Cobby Mayne who were back in the England squad

whilst Trent Alexander Arnold was left out by Thomas Tuchel.

So who should be on the plane come June?

Yeah. left out by Thomas Tuchel. So, who should be on the plane come June? Right, with us for this one, we've got Stu James. How are you doing, Stu?

Very well, thank you, Matt. Good morning to you. Yeah, and Jack Pitt Brooks on board with us too.

Jack, you okay? Hi, Matt. Yeah, and good thanks. Good stuff. Right, then Thomas Tuch, named a 35-man squad ahead of England's friendlies against Uruguay and Japan, including five goalkeepers, thus wisely fending off a couple of days of four goalkeepers, Thomas. Four, that's insane memes. Jack, this is a bigger squad than the 26 players he can take to the World Cup. How much impact are these friendlys going to have on who makes the final cut, do you think?

Yeah, quite a lot of impact. It's really interesting, I think, how he's done it. So basically,

he's split the squad into two sections. The first section is 26 players, and I guess we can

probably call that Possible. These are fringe players who are not

definite to go to the World Cup, and they're the ones who are competing to play in, they're the

ones who've been training at St. George's this week, and they're competing to play against

Uruguay tonight. Tomorrow morning, 11 other players who I guess we can call Probables will join

up with a squad. Those are the guys like, you know,

rice, cane, saka and so on. When they join the squad, that means that I guess 10 or so

players from the possibles will drop out and they'll again go back to the 26 man squad, which

will compete for the Japan game on Tuesday. So it's a way to make sure that he can see as many players as possible,

while also giving the possible players a bit more space to show what they can do without having,

you know, the obvious top players, Kane, Rice, Sacker, etc., breeding down their necks. So I think

he'll learn a lot from training over the course of this week and next week. And he'll also,

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