England manager Gareth Southgate defended his decision to select John Stones for two games in the space of three days after the Manchester City defender limped out of Tuesday’s 2-2 draw against Belgium after just 10 minutes due to injury.
Stones, who played the full 90 minutes of Saturday’s 1-0 Wembley defeat against Brazil, started against Belgium before suffering an injury to his adductor muscle.
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The injury now makes Stones a doubt for City’s crucial Premier League clash against Arsenal on Sunday — a situation compounded for the champions with Kyle Walker returning to the Etihad after suffering a hamstring injury against Brazil.
But Southgate was unrepentant about selecting Stones against Belgium and said that other leading nations did similar with senior players during this international break.
“We did [with Stones] what Holland did with Virgil van Dijk tonight, what Norway did with [Martin] Odegaard and also what the Dutch with Nathan Aké, but it [criticism] only seems to fall on us.
“Of course I am disappointed if he [Stones] has a problem. It seems to be in the adductor area, so we will have to wait and see.
“But John hadn’t played for two weeks before joining up with the squad, so it is not an overload problem. But I hate sending players back to their clubs not fully fit.”
England secured a draw against fellow Euro 2024 qualifiers Belgium with Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham scoring an equaliser four minutes into stoppage time at the end of the game.
Belgium twice took the lead through Youri Tielemans — an Ivan Toney penalty was England’s first equaliser — but Bellingham’s goal spared England two successive defeats.
With Southgate handing first starts to Toney and Kobbie Mainoo, he said the end result was a positive due to the changes in his team.
“Jude of course is the headline and that competitive desire not to lose, to win, got us through,” Southgate said. “We recovered from setbacks with a pretty inexperienced team against a side with some very good players.
“Some players have definitely emerged positively from the opportunities they have had so we have great depth, but injuries are a concern and we still have the real heat of the season to come. We know what we have until the end.”
Belgium coach Dominic Tedesco said England deserved to salvage a draw from the game, despite his team leading for much of the encounter.
“Five seconds to go, you can win a game at Wembley,” he said. “That would be something very special and fantastic, but over the game, England was really strong and created many chances, so I think it is a fair result.
“It’s not easy to control this kind of team for 90 minutes, especially here at Wembley.”