Tino Livramento’s calf injury, sustained in training ahead of England’s World Cup opener against Croatia, has exposed significant vulnerabilities in Thomas Tuchel’s defensive planning.
Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah has been called up as Livramento’s replacement, adding further scrutiny to selections that already carried considerable risk before a ball was kicked.
Livramento’s injury record should perhaps have raised concerns earlier, given the Newcastle full-back missed most of the end of last season with a thigh problem and had also suffered hamstring issues.
England now have three natural full-backs remaining in Reece James, Tottenham Hotspur’s Djed Spence, and Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly, who can also operate in midfield.
Newcastle’s Dan Burn can cover at left-back, while Jarell Quansah and Ezri Konsa offer alternatives, but deploying them in unfamiliar roles at a World Cup against elite opposition carries obvious dangers.
As former head coach Sir Gareth Southgate discovered when he played Alexander-Arnold in midfield at Euro 2024, major tournaments are no place for experimental positioning or square pegs in round holes.
Chalobah’s selection, a central defender by trade, fits Tuchel’s apparent preference for tall, physical defenders, and suggests Ezri Konsa will start ahead of Marc Guehi against Croatia.
The Chelsea man has only one senior England cap, coming in a 3-1 defeat to Senegal at the City Ground last year, making this a significant vote of confidence from Tuchel in a relatively inexperienced 26-year-old.
John Stones, 32 and entering his sixth major tournament, remains England’s most experienced and classiest defender, though he started only five Premier League games last season due to injury and has since left Manchester City.
James, too, has been hampered by regular hamstring problems in recent years, managing just 20 league appearances last season, meaning Tuchel will need to carefully manage minutes in the intense summer heat.
The decision to call up Chalobah rather than a natural full-back reinforces the sense that Real Madrid’s Trent Alexander-Arnold remains firmly outside Tuchel’s plans, a pattern stretching back to August when the head coach omitted him from squads for World Cup qualifiers against Andorra and Serbia.
Tuchel even preferred Alexander-Arnold’s former Liverpool team-mate Curtis Jones, a central midfielder, at right-back against Andorra in June, underlining how far down the pecking order the attacking full-back had fallen.
Tuchel has been direct about his reservations, saying: “If he wants to have this impact in the English national team then he has to take the defensive part very, very seriously. Because when we are talking, especially about qualifying football, and then tournament football, the one defensive error, the one moment where you are not 100% awake, can be decisive. It can be the moment where you pack your suitcases and go home.”
Alexander-Arnold did make Tuchel’s provisional 55-man World Cup squad, though that could hardly be described as a ringing endorsement, and he ultimately missed out on the final 26.
The contrast with his treatment under interim head coach Lee Carsley is stark, with Carsley deploying Alexander-Arnold at left-back in a 3-1 Nations League victory in Finland in October 2024, a performance he crowned with a superb free-kick.
Alexander-Arnold started four of six matches under Carsley but none of Tuchel’s 14, a statistic that speaks plainly to the disconnect between the two coaches’ assessments of the player.
When naming his squad, Tuchel was characteristically clear about his philosophy, stating: “We are trying to select and build the best possible team, which is not necessarily to select the 26 most talented players. Teams win championships.”
That approach left no room for Manchester United’s Luke Shaw, Newcastle’s Lewis Hall, or Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly, whose impressive form came too late to shift Tuchel’s thinking.
Harry Maguire broke ranks before the official announcement to reveal he had been omitted and described himself as “shocked and gutted,” though Tuchel had previously stated Maguire was fifth in his central defensive pecking order.
England’s quest to win the World Cup begins in demanding conditions in the USA, with potential games at altitude in Mexico City on the horizon, and Tuchel is clearly determined that his squad is physically prepared for every challenge that lies ahead.
