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Gareth Southgate gives Harry Kane and Kyle Walker injury updates after England defeat

Walker hobbled off as England were beaten by Brazil at Wembley

Richard Jolly
Saturday 23 March 2024 22:11 GMT
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Kyle Walker captained England but was brought off midway through the first half
Kyle Walker captained England but was brought off midway through the first half (Action Images via Reuters)

Harry Kane will return to Munich and will miss England’s friendly against Belgium, while Gareth Southgate could also be without Kyle Walker for Tuesday’s match.

England captain Kane was at Wembley to watch the 1-0 defeat to Brazil but his ankle injury is sufficiently serious to rule him out of their next friendly. “He’ll go back. He won’t be fit for Tuesday,” said Southgate.

Walker wore the armband in the absence of Kane and Jordan Henderson but the Manchester City defender went off in the first half.

And Southgate added: “He’s not had many injuries, so he himself isn’t sure whether it’s just tightness. I suspect if he’s feeling it, it’s a little bit more than that but we’ll know a bit more over the next 24 and 36 hours.”

Henderson and Cole Palmer might both be fit for the Belgium game and Southgate said: “The two boys trained today so they’ve come through that OK. They should join the group that will train tomorrow and we’ll go from there with that.”

Southgate gave debuts to Anthony Gordon from the start and Kobbie Mainoo and Ezri Konsa as replacements against Belgium and praised all three.

“Kobbie was a chance to dip his toes. We’ve brought him with us,” he said. “To get Kobbie on the pitch was also clearly a brilliant moment for him and his family. You saw a couple of turns and a couple of really composed moments that is a bit of an indication of what he might become.”

“I thought Anthony was very good. Both sides of his game looked very accomplished. “Ezri to come in at the moment he did and to deal with a player of that quality I thought he was also excellent, showed real composure and, yeah, he should be really happy with his debut. We were really pleased with him.”

Ollie Watkins led the line instead of Kane and Southgate said: “I thought Ollie did a good job, didn’t get that clear chance on goal that you might want as a as a forward but a lot of his work was very, very good.

“I was really pleased with the players that went in. We need to find out about them, we need to know where we might head if we didn’t have Harry for a big match.

“Clearly I don’t like losing football matches, but I thought there were lots of very good individual performances from players who’ve hardly played for England.”

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