Gareth Southgate has said that Danny Drinkwater rejected a call-up the England squad.
England are due to play a friendly against Germany on Friday evening, before hosting Brazil on Tuesday. The games could prove more difficult than any of the opponents England faced in qualification for the World Cup, but Southgate has had to deal with a lot of withdrawals from his squad.
Six players – Harry Kane, Harry Winks, Dele Alli, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Fabian Delph – have pulled out, and Jack Butland broke his finger, meaning the England manager will have to pick an experimental side against the world champions. Eric Dier is set to captain the team.
Southgate’s selection headache extended to Drinkwater rejecting a place in the squad. According to the England manager, Drinkwater refused a call-up because he didn’t feel fit enough to contribute. The Chelsea midfielder hasn’t played a full match since April, when he was with Leicester City. He has only made one start for his new team, and is currently recovering from a calf problem.
Southgate explained the player’s decision, saying:
“I wanted to find out where he felt he was. He felt he wasn’t ready yet to play this level. If Danny didn’t feel he was ready for that I can understand it given the amount of minutes he’s had and he didn’t play at the end of the season with Leicester either.”
He also offered no guarantees that Drinkwater would be in his plans for the next set of games in March.
“I’ve no idea. I would have thought so, but we might have other players back by then. I can’t hypothesise over who I might be calling in March. I have no idea of how he feels or where he’s at physically.”
Drinkwater has won three caps in his career, the last of which came in March 2016. He was somehow overlooked for the Euro 2016 squad by Roy Hodgson, despite helping Leicester to the league title.
Chris Sutton, who won a single England cap and rejected a call-up to play in a ‘B’ international in 1998, has said the player has effectively ended his international career.
“Danny Drinkwater has made the biggest mistake of his career in snubbing Gareth Southgate,” Sutton wrote in a newspaper column.
“Telling Glenn Hoddle that I would not play in an England B fixture in 1998 was the worst decision I ever made. At the age of 24, my international career was over. Now, Drinkwater’s chances of playing at the World Cup are surely over and future England managers – never mind Southgate – will not want to touch him… If I could turn back the clock, I would have behaved differently. This is a decision Drinkwater will regret for years to come.”
