Bang. How’s your touch, Marcus? England’s audition week began with Phil Foden fizzing a ball at Marcus Rashford along the turf so quickly that it suffered friction burns. With impeccable control, Rashford grinned. Foden smirked back. All friends.
All friends with the underlining reality that the race for these 26 World Cup golden tickets starts in earnest now. Twenty-four trained in the wind and rain at St George’s Park on Tuesday, Thomas Tuchel turning like an owl in the middle of drills in futile attempts to keep track of everybody.
Woolly hatted, Tuchel watched as his assistant, Anthony Barry, took a session that increased with intensity as it went on. Three of these before Uruguay at Wembley on Friday night and three that will go some way to shaping the thinking of England’s head coach.
‘Calm it down lads,’ Barry had to say at one point. Jordan Henderson roared appreciation for Harvey Barnes as he challenged Adam Wharton or as Foden pirouetted away from danger. Tuchel watched, kept checking his stopwatch hidden inside an overcoat pocket, keeping specific drills to four minutes in a bid to maintain focus and interest.
England were out there for about an hour, on a pitch that had six sprinklers dousing it and in front of FA executives John McDermott and Dan Ashworth – as well as the visiting three-cap Tom Heaton, who was bearhugged by the goalkeepers before Hilario put them through a sharp passage testing their footwork.
‘Under pressure, red,’ Tuchel shouted at his outfielders as the keepers popped passes between themselves 50 yards away.
They were keenly looking at how midfielders overlapped and underlapped up against coaches Justin Cochrane and Nicolas Mayer acting as shadow defenders, underlapping a potentially crucial way to unpick stubbornly deep defences in the earlier stages.
That is to come and this was ultimately the gentle beginning of the American run-in given the squad had only joined up earlier in the day but even then, there was a sense across training that eyes were on. Fikayo Tomori and Noni Madueke won’t mind Tuchel’s positive reinforcement as the manager peered over heads to see exactly what was happening on the other side of a hexagon.
Jude Bellingham and James Garner in action at St George’s Park on Tuesday afternoon
Barry’s Hexagon is a large game of keep-ball, each side around 20 yards long penning in a six versus six, three touches maximum. Another team of half-a-dozen stay on the perimeter’s edge, defined by white tap, and fire passes back in with only one touch. The three teams would rotate periodically.
Throughout, Jude Bellingham and Cole Palmer were the ‘jokers’ – the spare men, central to the chaos, playing for anybody who needed them. That those two remained in free roles perhaps suggests that Tuchel and Barry wanted to look at the pair’s scanning. Certainly Bellingham, who made a comeback from a hamstring injury in Real Madrid’s derby win over Atletico on Sunday.
He will be carefully managed over the coming days, with Tuchel having not divulged who of this squad is going home after Uruguay publicly or privately. The new lads, including Everton’s James Garner, will be striving to reach game two to give themselves the best possible opportunity to ‘compete for a ticket’ as Tuchel says.
Marcus Rashford and Harry Maguire will hope to be part of the World Cup squad
‘I didn’t tell anybody about the call up because I knew the squad was going out the next day,’ Garner said. ‘On the way to training (on Friday) I rang my family but I just wanted to digest it myself.’ The 25-year-old hopes his father, a Liverpool supporter, can make the trip from Thailand to Wembley.
That would be some present and Garner actually had a gift waiting for him at England HQ after that introduction to the seniors. His old Under-21 coach, Lee Carsley, kept a gold cap knocking around his office to commemorate the European Championship victory. Not last summer – Garner was too old then – but the 2023 triumph. Three years to deliver.
‘How he’s done has not surprised me,’ Carsley said. ‘His versatility, the fact he can play two or three positions effectively. Physically he’s grown into his body.’
Garner downplayed the versatility element, claiming that a spell at right back only really helps his midfield duties to make him more defensively aware. Yet that cannot harm his chances this week as everybody within this group tries to present their X-Factor.
