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England head coach Thomas Tuchel has said that reports on the pitch will not affect which players will be involved in his team’s friendly against New Zealand.
of Daily Mail, External He said the field for the game at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was a ‘plug and play’ field that was installed only a week ago.
Most of the World Cup matches are being played in stadiums that have artificial pitches but are lined with grass.
The Football Association’s traveling field staff are making contact with the site on the pitch, which is slightly distorted in the image.
England have no injury concerns and despite the start of the World Cup being so close, Tuchel said the field conditions “will not affect my team selection”. “As I hear,” he said, “it will.”
“I saw a photo from a journalist, which made me a little worried and worried, but we’ll decide when we’re there,” Tuchel said at a press conference on Friday.
“If there are any issues, we can always respond. The plan is to play 45 minutes with two full teams and expose everyone to the same amount of minutes.
“Then we can continue with the same training load for the next three days. That’s the plan and we’re sticking to it at the moment.”
England are in Florida for a pre-World Cup camp in West Palm Beach and play New Zealand on Saturday (21:00 BST).
The match is the first of two warm-ups, the other against Costa Rica on June 10 (21:00 BST), before the World Cup officially kicks off on June 11.
England trained on Friday with a 27-man session, excluding Arsenal players Eberechi Eze, Noni Maduke, Dylan Rice and Bukayo Saka, as they take part in the Champions League final on May 30.
Premier League players Josh King, Rio Ngumoha, Ethan Nwaneri, Alex Scott and Jason Steele have been training with Tuchel’s squad to boost their numbers.
Goalkeeper Dean Henderson joined the squad for training after the Conference League final win over Crystal Palace.
