Is Cole Palmer’s withdrawal from the England squad really that bad?

We’re only a few days into the longest ever international break and it appears we’re already starting to lose our collective minds.

Ahead of a genuinely exciting game against Spain tomorrow, when we should be talking about how exactly Thomas Tuchel plans to fix some of the problems that left England short during the World Cup, we’ve instead spent the week returning to the old club vs country debate that dominated much of the ‘Golden Generation’ era.

Back then England’s failures were often put down to the fact that players from rival clubs found it difficult to get along, with Rio Ferdinand admitting his drive to win with Manchester United left him afraid to open up in front of Chelsea and Liverpool players ‘for fear they would take something back to their club and use it against us’.

Things have moved on in recent years, with players generally being pretty pally behind closed doors – even too pally for some of the more old-school pundits of the game.

The return to this debate is instead focused on whether or not players want to play for England enough, whether international football matters enough to them, after five dropped out from Tuchel’s squad this week for varying injury concerns.

It’s Cole Palmer’s decision to drop out of the squad due to a minor injury that has brought the most ire, leading to some in the wild outer reaches of the podcasting sphere to accuse him of faking it because he was left out of Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad.

Former Wales international James Collins thinks Palmer has ‘got the hump’ with Tuchel over his exclusion during the summer, even suggesting he went to Chelsea’s medical staff and said ‘don’t fancy it… say something, load management’.

Putting aside the fact that Collins’ opinion is based on nothing more than a hunch, is load management such a bad thing? Someone like Michael Owen might have benefitted from it…

Of course, clubs across the Premier League are more than happy for their players to miss out on international duty, not that this is a new phenomenon – Sir Alex Ferguson famously played Paul Scholes in a midweek game in 2002, the day after withdrawing the midfielder from an England squad due to injury.

Palmer’s form last season suffered as a result of trying to play through a groin injury that just wouldn’t go away and his exclusion from the World Cup was fair – even if he would’ve been a great player to have for those final ten minutes against Argentina.

His detractors have argued that because he didn’t make the World Cup, he should be willing to risk injury again for the sake of a couple of Nations League games. But can we blame the players if they are less than enthusiastic about internationals?

English football fans tend to bemoan the international break as boring, a waste of time and something to be endured rather than enjoyed. The general attitude towards the England team seems to be that important England games take place at the World Cup and the Euros, and nowhere else.

Given we’re just under two years away from the next major tournament, can we really be that upset with Palmer if he’s decided to play the long game and focus on being fully fit and back to his mercurial self? Time will only tell on that front.

But hey, on the bright side, there’s only two more weeks until we can all go back to what we know best – complaining about club football instead.

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