Mason Greenwood: Harry Kane injury will test Tuchel’s England ‘distraction’ resolve

Mason Greenwood remains in international football exile. His haul of 21 league goals as an Englishman last season was only bettered by Harry Kane, who got 26 for Bayern Munich. And yet, he’s not in Thomas Tuchel’s “thoughts”.

“I have not spoken to him until now,” the head coach said in his press conference on Friday. “I have not spoken to him or his camp. My understanding was that he tries to play for Jamaica so we didn’t give it another thought. He was not in the mix at the moment and he is not in our thoughts for our team.”

Greenwood hasn’t played for the Three Lions since his debut in the 1-0 win over Iceland in August 2020, at which point he was set for a long and productive England career. There’s little doubt that Greenwood would currently be Kane’s England understudy ahead of the 2026 World Cup without the charges brought against him for the rape and assault of a young woman at the start of 2022.

The Crown Prosecution Service announced in February 2023 that the case against Greenwood had been discontinued after the ‘withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that came to light meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction’.

Former Manchester United CEO Richard Arnold rightly faced huge backlash when he revealed that the club was “considering reintegration” of their academy graduate, and he was eventually sold to Marseille for £26.7m in the summer of 2024 after a season on loan at Getafe.

Gareth Southgate never selected Greenwood again, but left the door open to him for a return to the fold after Euro 2024.

Southgate said: “Well for me I don’t think it’s something for pre-Euros. I think allowing him to get his career going again abroad appears to have been a good move but I have to say I have not tracked it closely.

“I think at this moment in time it would be a big distraction for the team and let’s see where that leads next season. I would need to know more details about the whole thing before it was an option.”

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The door was firmly closed again by Southgate’s interim successor, Lee Carsley, who said “Mason wasn’t a player that we can consider” despite his flying start in Ligue 1 last season, offering no greater insight as to why.

We know why, though. Like Southgate and now Tuchel, he didn’t want to be ‘the guy who picked Greenwood’. The possible pro of him improving England’s forward options gets nowhere close to outweighing the many significant obvious cons.

As a purely sporting decision, it’s all Tuchel would be asked about. And with this the first of just three international camps before the World Cup, as was the case for Southgate, he and his players just didn’t need what would be a “big distraction”.

Greenwood qualifies to play for Jamaica through his grandad and has intimated that he would be willing to switch allegiances, but after Reggae Boyz boss Steve McClaren obtained a Jamaican passport for Greenwood, the striker asked for more time to decide his international future.

He may now have accepted his fate of not going to the 2026 World Cup with England, but we wonder whether the necessary mental gymnastics would have been attempted to put Greenwood “in the mix” if he played in a more useful position.

“At the moment the four players competing in central midfield are Jordan [Henderson], Declan [Rice], Elliot [Anderson] and Ruben [Loftus-Cheek],” Tuchel said on Friday. “They are all very mobile players and there is not one deep number six, maybe John Stones but he left this morning.”

An extraordinarily depressing quote for so many reasons to highlight the sort of desperation which would certainly be leading a section of fans and particular news outlets to be pushing for the return of Greenwood if he was a No.6 rather than a backup striker.

If Tuchel isn’t picking Greenwood on a moral basis – and he shouldn’t – whether under advisement from the FA or not, then it shouldn’t matter. But the lack of a blanket ‘no’ with regard to his England future suggests him not being selected is at least in part down to him not really being needed.

What happens if Kane gets injured? Tuchel was appointed to win the World Cup and surely won’t fancy his chances with Ollie Watkins or Liam Delap leading the line after what he’s seen from them at the start of this season.

We wonder if that would be the point when some feel Greenwood becomes worth the “distraction” for England.