Gareth Southgate has named his 33-man provisional England squad for Euro 2020. The tournament was supposed to be held last year but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Uefa announced in may that each team will consist of 26 players instead of the usual 23 due to the risk of a covid outbreak and an unusual amount of injuries due to fixture constraints.
Gareth Southgate had a massive task of narrowing it down to 26 players after having selected and dropped many players in his last few squads leading up to the tournament but it was announced on Monday that Southgate will be naming a provisional squad consisting of 33 players and it would be narrowed down to 26 players on 1st of June. This is done to see whether there are any new injuries in the Champions League and Europa League final. Another reason is to give more time to currently injured players like Harry Maguire, Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips to see if they are fit enough to make the squad.
England Provisional 33-man squad for Euro 2020 -
Goalkeepers: Jordan Henderson, Sam Johnstone, Jordan Pickford, Aaron Ramsdale
Defenders: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Ben Chilwell, Conor Coady, Ben Godfrey, Reece James, Harry Maguire, Tryone Mings, Luke Shaw, John Stones, Kieran Trippier, Kyle Walker, Ben White
Midfielders: Jude Bellingham, Jordan Henderson, Jesse Lingard, Mason Mount, Kalvin Phillips, Declan Rice, James Ward-Prowse
Forwards: Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Mason Greenwood, Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jaden Sancho, Raheem Sterling, Ollie Watkins
England are in the group consisting of World Cup finalists Croatia along with Scotland and the Czech Republic. Croatia knocked England out of the World Cup Semi-Final. There is a lot of pressure on England to perform well in this tournament to follow up their great run in the World Cup. In the previous edition of the Euros England were knocked out by Iceland in what was considered as the worst performance by an English team in a major tournament. England are likely to at least reach the knockouts whether they finish first or second in their group remains to be seen. Failure to make it past the group stages would be a major upset.
Southgate has named 4 right-backs out of which he will have to leave at least 1 out in his final squad. A lot of reports suggested that Alexander-Arnold would be left out of the squad after not being in England's last squad. Ben White, Ben Godfrey and Aaron Ramsdale get maiden call-ups. On the other hand James Madison, Patrick Bamford and Danny Ings miss out. Eric Dier's poor run of form with Spurs made sure that he wasn't even in contention. Burnley's Nick Pope misses out through injury and is expected to go through surgery during the Euros.
The sheer amount of talent these 33 players have means that whoever the Englishman decides to leave out of his final squad will have a certain amount of backlash. On paper, this team has more informed individuals than the Squad that reached the World cup semi-finals in 2018. A Semifinal finish will be the least expected of this England squad.
Check here the full squads of Croatia UEFA Euro 2020 Squad , Poland UEFA Euro 2020 Squad and Portugal Euro 2020 Squad
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