England’s unused players to get training game against MLS side Sporting KC
Thomas Tuchel will give the 13 England players who did not play against Croatia on Wednesday the chance to train and play with Sporting Kansas City on Thursday.
The England squad flew back to their Kansas City base from Dallas after Wednesday’s 4-2 win, but Tuchel is keen to give the players who were not involved some “extra match loading” during the gap between games. It is not expected to be a formal 90-minute match.
England now have four days in Kansas City before they fly to Boston on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s game against Ghana.
With the players who started against Croatia undergoing recovery, the England group on Thursday is expected to be made up of those who were not involved or who came on as substitutes. Dean Henderson, James Trafford, Jarrell Quansah, Dan Burn, Jordan Henderson, Kobbie Mainoo, Eberechi Eze, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney played no part in the game.
Morgan Rogers, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Djed Spence and Marc Guehi all came on as second half substitutes, Rashford scoring the fourth goal of the game, set up by Saka.
“It’s true that we try to play an in-house match after the Croatia match,” Tuchel said on Tuesday evening in his pre-Croatia press conference. “We have many days between matches, we can give the players who will not play so many minutes tomorrow (Wednesday) extra match loading, not only loading from training. We did it after Costa Rica, we do it one last time on the day after the Croatia game.”
England played USL Championship side Miami FC in an informal friendly last week, playing two halves of 25 minutes each and winning 6-0.
The 2026 MLS season is currently on a break during the World Cup but the Sporting KC players have been back in training for the last six days. Sporting KC is in the early stages of a total roster rebuild under sporting director David Lee, who joined the club at the end of the season.
Sporting sits second-last in the MLS with 11 points from 14 games, though they do feature forward Dejan Joveljic, who plays for the Serbian national team.