England's World Cup squad - who should make Gareth…

England's World Cup squad - who should make Gareth Southgate's 26-man party for Qatar

Gareth Southgate is into World Cup countdown mode.

Incredibly, England have now played their last friendly ahead of the World Cup and there are 235 days until the tournament kicks off in Qatar. Jude Bellingham surely played his way into England’s starting line-up let alone nailing down a place in the squad and the teenage midfielder was arguably the biggest positive from the March friendlies.

Jordan Pickford, Declan Rice, Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane are the first names on the team sheet from the big guns. But there are still uncertainties within the starting XI but also strong competition for the 26 man squad as FIFA are expected to confirm they will follow UEFA’s example from the Euros and name three extra players rather than the traditional 23.

In defence, Southgate favours a back three. Harry Maguire took some stick at Wembley but will be in along with John Stones, Conor Coady, Kyle Walker and Tyrone Minds are in position. But Trent Alexander-Arnold has yet to nail down his starting place with Reece James the favourite at right back while Luke Shaw looks guaranteed while Tyrick Mitchell is a threat to Ben Chilwell.

Kalvin Phillips suddenly has competition in the form of Bellingham while Jordan Henderson has not started enough games for England in the past two years to be sure of his place. Kane is unquestionably the first choice centre forward, Tammy Abraham is scoring enough goals to be first reserve but Ollie Watkins did himself no harm by scoring against Ivory Coast.

Southgate will likely name ten defenders, seven midfielders and six forwards. This squad list has got two very open slots - one in defence and one in attack. But now with just six Nations League games left - four in June and two in September - time is running out for players to shine and Southgate admitted that effectively the chance to experiment has gone.

Southgate said: “We are always trying to win the matches so we will try to navigate the four games with the strongest possible teams to win those games. We want to progress in the Nations League, we want to keep improving as a team. Whilst this window we had to have half a mind on the players going back into a massively heavy schedule, and if we don’t look after them then impossible that they are going to be looked after a little bit, but we were still able to learn a lot from these last two friendly games.”

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