Thomas Tuchel called up 35 players to his England squad for the friendlies against Uruguay and Japan this month.
This is the last international break of the season and also Thomas Tuchel’s last chance to get a close-up look at some players on the periphery of the national squad before he has to make his World Cup selections.
Tuchel called up six Newcastle United players in total this time around after making Harvey Barnes a late addition following Eberechi Eze’s withdrawal from the squad.
Barnes joined Aaron Ramsdale, Tino Livramento, Dan Burn, Lewis Hall and Anthony Gordon at St George’s Park.
After the game against Uruguay, Tuchel made some cuts to the squad as he looks to change things up with the starting XI to take on Japan, and these changes gave the German a chance to send some people home. Sky Sports confirmed the list on Saturday.
After playing a part in the Uruguay friendly, Barnes, Hall, and Livramento are all being kept around to be part of the squad to face Japan. They will be joined by Dan Burn and Anthony Gordon, who were rested against Uruguay.
That just leaves goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale, who took no part in Friday’s friendly, and will now return to Newcastle ahead of the game against Japan.
While nothing is certain, your money would be safe on a bet that Ramsdale’s World Cup quest was over unless there was some sort of incident that took out several of England’s goalkeepers.
Elsewhere, AC Milan’s Fikayo Tomori, Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton and Leeds’ Dominic Calvert-Lewin have also left the camp, with injury concerns also seeing Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, John Stones and Noni Madueke depart early.
It does mean that Harvey Barnes will get more time to state his case for a World Cup spot after turning his back on Scotland, where he’d have been all but guaranteed a place in their squad, perhaps even their Starting XI.
Hall, Livramento, Gordon and maybe even Burn seem like their places are locked in already, but with Barnes being a last-minute replacement for Eze, he’s got more work to do.
Perhaps if Ben White hadn’t nicked the goal off him on Friday, he’d have less work to do.