Speaking after his young team had made easy work of Montenegro U20s, coach Brian Eastick spoke to TheFA.com describing the real challenge that he has overcome before the U20 World Cup in Egypt – the task of getting the clubs’ permission to take their players away to Africa mid-season.
It is unlikely that England will be able to take anywhere near a full strength squad as most will be unable to leave their parent or loan club during the season, leaving it to be made up mostly of the reserve players of big clubs that haven’t yet sealed a loan move. Eastick is hoping that gthe players’ enthusiasm to make the World Cup squad will convince some clubs to release their players for the trip to Africa:
“The players involved all did very well, but the trick now is getting them to Egypt. That will be down to their clubs, but I do think that the players themselves are keen to come. We will just have to wait and see what reaction we get from the clubs and it’s difficult to say at this moment which of these players we will get.”
“We have to put an initial squad of 30 players into FIFA and we can’t change that once it’s done, so we’ve got to make sure that those 30 players have a very realistic chance of going with us. We then narrow that down to a squad of 21 players and we want to take as strong a squad as possible for what will be a terrific competition for any young player to experience.”
Sir Trevor Brooking, The FA’s Director of Football Development, is also looking into the issue and Eastick hopes that talks with the Professional Game Board will help matters. Despite the weakened squad however, England will still be hoping to make an impression on the tournament and with Ghana, Uzbekistan and Uruguay in their group a place in the knockout stage should be expected and from there on anything is possible, particularly considering that the likes of Spain, Germany and Italy will also be struggling with selection problems ahead of the Finals.
