Declan Rice has revealed he has been managing a hamstring injury for the second half of the season and said he has played an “obscene” number of games in a “crazy” schedule.
The midfielder supported Thomas Tuchel’s decision to take him off in the second half of England’s 4-2 win over Croatia.
“It was a smart decision. I was feeling a little bit of neural pain in my hamstring, which I was managing from after Christmas with Arsenal for a very long time,” Rice told ITV. “Obviously, not a lot of people would have known that it was all behind-the-scenes stuff, but it was a smart decision.
“In the end, that last 20 minutes is probably where you pick up the most, and it’s where you play a seventy-minute match. But that last twenty is where you really feel your body going for it. And I think it was a smart decision because the last few days I felt really, really good.”
But Rice has said he is fit to start England’s second game in the World Cup, when they face Ghana in Boston on 23 June.
Rice has shouldered a huge workload this season, playing 63 games for club and country as he helped Arsenal win the Premier League and reach the Champions League final.
The former West Ham midfielder played 4,456 minutes for Arsenal – second only to goalkeeper David Raya – as well as a further 540 for England as he has made 63 appearances in total.
“You get on with it obviously. It’s an obscene amount of games,” Rice added. “The schedule was crazy, but what can we do about it? You can’t sit and complain. We have to just get on with it for the moments like I had winning that Premier League.”
