Five England players who could be in the Goldilocks sweet spot come the World Cup | OneFootball

We’ve done the doom and gloom version of this feature already, detailing five key England players who might be really quite f*cked by the time the World Cup rolls around.

But there must always be a yin to that yang. Or the other way round. We don’t know.

Anyway. Here are five England players who might hit the tournament just right.

Harry Kane

It’s all relative, of course. We’ve all grown used to Kane playing pretty much all the football he could possibly play – often returning from injury with unwise haste – during his Tottenham days.

Now he still plays an awful lot of the football over in Germany, but not absolutely all of the football. And the football he does play – sorry if this offends – is obviously much easier.

We do enjoy how he is at last regarded as the best footballer on earth now he’s doing what he has done for the last decade but for a better team in a worse league when the obvious facts are that nothing he has done with Bayern is anything like as impressive as scoring 30 league goals for Antonio Conte’s anti-ballers in his final Spurs season.

But as Spurs wither and plunge ever deeper into an abyss of their own creation without him, he is out here living his best life as the best striker in the Bundesliga, one of its best midfielder and also a pretty handy defender.

He genuinely is the most complete footballer in the game right now, and he’s English. And he’s been able to get far more rest than he ever could in Our League because Bayern already have the title sewn up and Spurs would never, ever have anything sewn up this early. Largely because of Kane himself, not even mid-table irrelevance was ever secure so soon during his time as the club’s star man.

He’s played only 160 minutes of football across Bayern’s last six Bundesliga games and across the season has only been required to start 23 of their 30 games thus far.

He seems fitter and stronger than ever, with the sight of England fans genuinely cheering on the idea of him being replaced at a crucial moment in a knockout game by Ollie Watkins now feeling like something out of a fever dream.

Kobbie Mainoo

Ruben Amorim, we thank you for your service. The Portuguese had many odd but firmly held convictions during his Manchester United reign, none more baffling than his resolute belief that Mainoo was not in fact all – or indeed any of – that.

Michael Carrick is starting to find life slightly harder as his interim reign continues, but his first decision being to reverse that position was the most obvious, straightforward easy win since Harry Redknapp brought ketchup back to the Spurs canteen.

The outcome has been an astonishing season of two halves for Mainoo. A first half where he barely featured – only twice managing more than 30 minutes in any Premier League game – and a second half where he has been an absolute inked-in fixture of the United starting XI.

The results from these two halves of the season tell their own story. Obviously, the return to a prominent role for Mainoo isn’t the only reason United are now good after being cack, but it’s a factor.

Even last week the evidence was there, when a knock kept him out of the game against Leeds in which United looked alarmingly pre-Carrick in almost every area. Even in United’s only other defeat under Carrick, it was 1-1 at Newcastle when Mainoo was withdrawn with 15 minutes remaining.

Hitting a World Cup on the back of only playing half a season, and playing brilliantly in that half a season, and it not involving any kind of injury cloud at all is a rare luxury for any player. Apart from in 2022, obviously, but you know what we mean. Mainoo could be absolutely key this summer. Especially with both England’s midfield starters having the distinct air of the red zone about them.

Jude Bellingham

A difficult season on and off the pitch for Bellingham, with a gleeful tabloid charge led by the Daily Mail suggesting England needn’t bother with him at all. An obviously absurd position, but England is an obviously absurd country.

There’s no doubt Bellingham doesn’t always help himself, though. He may not be held to the same standards as his England team-mates by the media in this country but that just makes it all the more important he give them no ammunition. It’s not fair, but it’s the game.

For what it’s worth, we think the fact Bellingham has never played in the Premier League nor even particularly seemed like he’s that bothered about doing so is a huge part of this. He doesn’t have the week-to-week interaction with the press boys, who are themselves generally so convinced of the Premier League’s inherent superiority that anyone happy enough to play their football for Real Actual Madrid instead is viewed with suspicion even before you get to the fact Bellingham also has the unforgivable temerity to be confident and sure of himself and his talent.

The nerve, honestly.

No denying this season he has been short of his magnificent best, though, and the injury that kept him out through February and March might have a good bit of blessing in disguise about it.

If you are going to get injured in a World Cup year, it does feel like late March isn’t a bad time to return feeling recharged and refreshed. Just enough time to rumble back up to full match sharpness without getting knackered out by it all again. Lovely.

Reece James

With James, on balance, you’d definitely rather he’d simply been playing lots of football. His injury track record necessarily strikes a note of fear and caution about any ‘at least he won’t be f*cking knackered’ silver-lining effort.

But… at least he won’t be f*cking knackered. And the latest prognosis on his latest injury is encouraging, with it now looking like he’ll return for a decent chunk of the run-in at the end of this month or early next month.

Not perfect, but let us not allow perfect to be the enemy of the good. James is a certain starter in England’s best XI when fit, and it does now look very much like that should currently be his status come mid-June.

And if he were actually playing now, we all know the poor sod would do himself some kind of summer-scuppering mischief. We know what we said about return times when it comes to Bellingham. But as late as possible in May really might be for the best in James’ specific case.

Nico O’Reilly

Just a beguilingly compelling arc to the story of his season which started with lingering uncertainty over what his best position actually might be and has slowly seen him emerge as starting left-back for City and surely now England given the levels he’s been hitting in recent weeks of a season that’s just getting better and better.

He’s been heavily involved without being permanently involved in City’s season, growing in importance, stature and confidence as it’s progressed. That seems a tidy enough way to hit your first major tournament at the end of a season where halfway through it there was a perfectly makeable case that Djed Spence should actually have your spot.

He’s in the Premier League XI of the season as a left-back and will be in the England team as the same.