{"id":3490,"date":"2026-06-16T07:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3490"},"modified":"2026-06-16T07:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:02:14","slug":"world-cup-2026-bukayo-saka-says-he-is-ready-to-gamble-with-his-fitness-for-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3490","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Bukayo Saka says he is ready to gamble with his fitness for England"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saka, who will make his 50th appearance for England in his next match, played 27 minutes of England&#8217;s warm-up game against Costa Rica as the forward&#8217;s game-time was managed by Tuchel. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The winger was taken off in the Champions League final as Arsenal lost to Paris-St Germain in Budapest with the scores level at the time of his substitution. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saka&#8217;s performance in that match was criticised, but when asked if he found it frustrating being judged while not 100% fit, he said it is a &#8220;gamble&#8221; he is willing to take. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Yeah, but I think as players it&#8217;s the biggest gamble, especially if you&#8217;re not feeling your sharpest. You have the choice whether you don&#8217;t play or you put yourself out there knowing that people are going to judge you the same,&#8221; Saka said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And at the end of the day people don&#8217;t really care how you&#8217;re feeling, they expect you to deliver, they expect you to perform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m happy to take that gamble and it paid off I&#8217;d say, and I&#8217;m going to continue doing that &#8211; but like I said I&#8217;m feeling a lot better than I did in March and I&#8217;m ready to go, so I&#8217;m excited.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saka is competing for a starting spot on the right wing with Arsenal team-mate Noni Madueke, but says that despite competing for game-time for club and country they want the best for each other. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s quite unique, two players that play in the same position to be as close as we are,&#8221; Saka said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t really know how it works, but it works. Noni is like my brother on and off the pitch. We push each other and we speak every day. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We have that mutual respect for each other and we want each other to do well. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The good thing is that we play on the same team and that if one of us is doing well it is good for the other.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saka, who will make his 50th appearance for England in his next match, played 27 minutes of England&#8217;s warm-up game&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3490","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\/3490","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=3490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}