{"id":3407,"date":"2026-06-15T17:18:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3407"},"modified":"2026-06-15T17:18:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T17:18:27","slug":"world-cup-john-stones-had-to-dig-deep-to-secure-place-in-england-squad-after-retirement-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3407","title":{"rendered":"World Cup: John Stones had to dig deep to secure place in England squad after retirement fears"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Stones started alongside Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa<\/a> in England’s latest friendly and could be given the nod ahead of Manchester City team-mate Marc Guehi for the Croatia game (Wednesday, 21:00 BST).<\/p>\n

Stones played just 439 minutes of Premier League football in the season just ended, featuring in only 18 games for City across all competitions.<\/p>\n

He missed two months with a thigh injury and had to sit out England’s two friendly matches before Tuchel picked his squad because of a calf injury.<\/p>\n

But Stones, who announced in April he will leave City this summer,<\/a> says he has been “fit, pretty much all season”.<\/p>\n

Tuchel gave his backing to Stones, picking him ahead of Harry Maguire and Levi Colwill, by saying he remains a “big part” of his plans and has “a lot of credit in the bank”.<\/p>\n

This will be Stones’ sixth major tournament for England, having helped the side to reach the semi-finals and quarter-finals of the two previous World Cups.<\/p>\n

“I love being here and I think that goes without saying,” Stones said.<\/p>\n

“But when I got the call off of the manager, I think he saw the kid inside of me, how I reacted it where I couldn’t really control myself.<\/p>\n

“It was like the first time, just pure joy coming out of me, and I think that is one of the qualities that he loves – how all of this group can be ourselves as players.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stones started alongside Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa in England’s latest friendly and could be given the nod ahead of Manchester…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}