Benjamin White: Why eight other players rejected England

Benjamin White is not the first player to withdraw himself from England duty. One Manchester United champion enjoyed a decent international career thereafter.

Gareth Southgate kept the details at a premium when discussing White deciding he “didn’t want to be considered for England squads at this time”. Definitely nothing to do with Steve Holland, though. Not at all.

Anyway, history shows such a call does tend to end international careers, but there is a precedent for bridges being built over time.

Chris Sutton – zero caps after snub

“It was yet another mistake,” said Sutton about his decision to reject Glenn Hoddle’s invitation to play for England’s B team in February 1998.

“I was picked for the game against Cameroon, and I was really delighted to get on and get my first taste of international football,” he said, of what will forever remain his only England cap, earned the previous November. “Then in the next couple of months before the Chile game I did alright. My form was good, and I think there were injuries.

“I thought I’d definitely be in the squad again. I thought I might start to be honest, and then Glenn Hoddle put me in the B squad. It wasn’t right what I did, and Glenn Hoddle was quite right to put me away. I phoned him up and said I wasn’t going to play for the B team, and he said I’d never play for England again. And you have to say he was right!”

Yes he was. Even if Sutton’s form was ostensibly worthy of a call which was bound not to come when he raged at the perceived “demotion”.

READ MORE: Bellingham is collateral damage in furious rant at ‘loser’ White for refusing to take up England arms

David Bentley – seven caps after snub

The prioritisation of club over country is a long-running argument, but nobody has made as emphatic a statement as Bentley. Or the “new David Beckham”, as Steve McClaren helpfully labelled him.

In May 2007, Bentley was Man of the Match for England’s B team against Albania and was promptly named in the senior squad for two games the following month, although he didn’t come off the bench in a Brazil friendly and missed out on the matchday squad for a qualifier against Estonia.

Later in June, Stuart Pearce called up Bentley for the Under-21 European Championships, but he refused the place, citing fatigue off the back of a 47-game season for Blackburn. Pearce’s response was typical: “When your country comes calling, you put them first and yourself second.”

“I think it is for the betterment of my career,” explained Bentley, who would be booed on his subsequent debut for the seniors that September, having consulted seasoned internationals who warned him of the rigours of such an arduous schedule.

“I owe a lot to the Blackburn fans too and they are paying the money to watch me week-in and week-out,” he continued. “I had three decisions: the club could have pulled me out; I could have pulled myself out; or I could have faked an injury. I am an honest lad, I’m not a robot and I wanted to give my decision and my opinion on it.”

Micah Richards – zero caps after snub

We all got into the spirit of London 2012, but none more so than Richards. He turned down playing for England for it.

Roy Hodgson put the then-Manchester City defender in direct competition for a place against Phil Jones and picked the latter, but wanted Richards on his standby list for Euro 2012; he would have made the squad given Martin Kelly was eventually called up to replace Gary Cahill. Yet Richards decided that he would rather play in the Olympics.

“Once I wasn’t picked in the squad this chance with GB came around and I wanted to go to the Games,” Richards said. “It is always an honour to represent your country. It’s not just England, it’s GB, so it is something new.”

Wonder what inappropriate joke Jamie Carragher would make about that statement in the perennial pursuit of viral banter.

Ben Foster – three caps after snub

It wasn’t just that Foster decided to take an indefinite break from international football – although he stressed that this was not a retirement – but that England manager Fabio Capello only found out the news when it appeared as a statement on Birmingham City’s website.

Worse still was that Foster had actually spoken to general manager Franco Baldini the week before and failed to give any indication that the decision was forthcoming. It made England’s management look silly and meant that Joe Hart no longer had meaningful competition for his place.

Two years later, Foster announced that he was up for playing for England again, and 16 months on was appearing in a World Cup for his country.

Michael Carrick – 12 caps after snub

“I hadn’t played for so long. It’s not so much that you fall out of love, it’s just that it isn’t there any more. When you are taken away from it you realise how special it is and what it means to be there.”

That was Michael Carrick’s emotional statement about refusing another place on Hodgson’s reserve list for Euro 2012 after failing to play a competitive minute for England between October 2009 and the eve of that tournament; the 30-year-old “did not want to be sitting on the subs’ bench” at his age.

The decision was particularly odd given that, two months later, Carrick decided that he did want to play international football and promptly started four of England’s next five games. Those two intervening months were presumably spent picking up toys and putting them back into the pram. Or maybe he just watched that game against Italy and realised he had a bloody good chance of starting.

Tom Ince – zero caps after snub

Another player to turn down a place at the Under-21 European Championship and rule himself out of future selections, Ince later explained that his was an entirely selfless act.

“People don’t realise that I was the oldest player in that squad by a good 18 months,” he told the League Paper in 2015. “I played in the qualifying games because I wanted to help. But I’d experienced the European Championships once and I just felt that we had a new young crop of players coming through who deserved the opportunity more than me.

“I wouldn’t ever refuse to play for England just because I didn’t fancy it. And I’d never feign injury or anything like that. I love playing for my country and I’ve got ambitions to do it again.”

Reader, he never represented another England squad at any age group.

Callum Hudson-Odoi – zero caps after snub

The transition from youth side to the seniors feels like a permanent step but is not necessarily irreversible. Hudson-Odoi seemed to struggle with being given too much too soon when his full debut and three promising caps in 2019 did not solidify his place in the squad and he was reintroduced to the U21s under Aidy Boothroyd – which to be fair would be difficult for most if not all people.

Hudson-Odoi served his time in that setup while emerging at Chelsea but seemed to draw a line when new U21s manager Lee Carsley tried to call him up in consecutive international breaks in late 2021.

“He feels he would be best served staking a case for the team with Chelsea,” a palpably unimpressed Southgate said. “I think he has a better chance of impressing us if he is with the U21s as well, frankly. By not being in the U21s he misses a bit of an opportunity to come across if we need players for training and those sorts of things.”

Danny Drinkwater – zero caps after snub

The former Chelsea midfielder ‘snubbed a desperate SOS to solve England’s injury crisis’, reported the Mirror in November 2017 when Southgate saw six players drop out of his squad for friendlies against Germany and Brazil.

It was not a rejection which was taken well. With it being the third time that Drinkwater had failed to join up with the England squad – in the previous year he had pulled out due to rib and groin issues – the manager hinted that he might have missed the boat.

Thrice-capped Drinkwater was reportedly left furious by the suggestion that he ‘snubbed’ a call-up. By that point in the season, he had only played 22 minutes for Chelsea since joining them that summer and he claimed a calf injury had flared up in an 11-minute cameo against Manchester United before the international break. The midfielder felt his time would be better spent getting treatment at Cobham.

The fact he was able to play in the Blues’ first game when the Premier League resumed perhaps didn’t strengthen his argument.

‘Danny Drinkwater has made the biggest mistake of his career in snubbing Gareth Southgate,’ fellow turncoat Sutton later wrote in a newspaper column. ‘Telling Glenn Hoddle that I would not play in an England B fixture in 1998 was the worst decision I ever made. If I could turn back the clock, I would have behaved differently. This is a decision Drinkwater will regret for years to come.’

READ MORE: Remembering the time Danny Drinkwater booted an actual child