From Bukayo Saka's injury issues to Jude Bellingham blowing up: Six reasons why England WON'T win the World Cup

It might sound like a strange thing to say about a side that kept clean sheets in all eight of their World Cup qualifiers, but the make-up of England's defence is far from convincing.

Nico O'Reilly is coming off the back of a brilliant breakthrough season at Manchester City but he's a relatively inexperienced left-back who often operates like an auxiliary midfielder, which is ideal for a Pep Guardiola team but undeniably a risk for Tuchel's England. It's, thus, puzzling that the German decided against including an orthodox left-back in his squad - particularly as England's centre-halves are hardly blessed with blistering pace.

Counting on the incredibly injury-prone John Stones to stay fit is also a massive gamble and one can understand why Harry Maguire was so upset by his omission, even if his petulant reaction perfectly illustrated why Tuchel reportedly doesn't consider him the right kind of character for his squad. England will also be constantly sweating on the availability of Reece James at right-back, given the Chelsea skipper has proven almost as physically frail as Stones in recent years.

All of these injury issues are concerning because the possible replacements at centre-back and full-back, Ezri Konsa, Dan Burn, Jarell Quansah, Tino Livramento and Djed Spence, do not exactly inspire confidence due to their lack of caps.

For all their clean sheets in qualifying, then, England have almost as many question marks over the quality and depth of their defence going into the toughest tournament in international football.

If last summer's Club World Cup in the United States is anything to go by, the weather is going to have a major role to play in how things pan out over the next six weeks.

Former Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said that the heat was so stifling it was "impossible" to organise normal training sessions, while Blues midfielder Enzo Fernandez admitted to feeling "dizzy" during matches.

FIFA has moved to introduce three-minute cooling breaks midway through the first and second halves of each and every game, which will no doubt help the players stay hydrated. However, the expected high temperatures are still going to be draining - and particularly for players from colder climates such as England.

Kane has pointed out that he and his team-mates are all elite-level athletes and, thus, capable of coping with the conditions, while Marc Guehi has hailed the decision to arrive early in America as "a fantastic idea", given it provided the squad with more time to acclimatise.

However, retaining possession is clearly going to be key at this World Cup and there's no disguising that high-energy midfielders such as Rice are nowhere near as good at keeping a hold of the ball as the likes of Portugal duo Vitinha and Joao Neves - as we saw in the Champions League final - so it's really not that hard to imagine England's players being exhausted by the business end of the tournament.

Remember, only two European teams have ever won a World Cup on another continent - Spain in 2010, and Germany in 2014 - and both of those tournaments were played in winter in the southern hemisphere.

Bukayo Saka was unquestionably England's outstanding attacker at Euro 2024. However, his form and fitness have become a major cause for concern going into the World Cup.

Saka was sidelined on three separate occasions during Arsenal's Premier League title-winning campaign, which partly explains why he was so ineffective during the Champions League final loss to Paris Saint-Germain - a game in which the winger completed just four passes and failed to dribble around an opponent once.

The hope is that the World Cup will provide Saka with the perfect platform to get back to his brilliant best but Tuchel admitted on the eve of the Costa Rica game that the 24-year-old has still not fully recovered from the Achilles problem he picked up in March.

"Bukayo is still getting there," the England boss told reporters. "[He was] playing through discomfort at the end of the season, obviously managing it and playing at a high level, but still not at 100 per cent."

However, Tuchel's startling revelation that Saka is still unable to train on consecutive days does not bode well at all. Even if he's deemed fit enough to start, will Arsenal's 'Starboy' really be able to shine?...

The only interesting aspect of England's glorified training exercise against New Zealand last weekend was the reaction to the performance of Rio Ngumoha, who illuminated the second half of a dreadfully dull 1-0 win over the lowest-ranked team at the World Cup. Some observers even went so far as to openly wonder why the Liverpool winger hadn't been included in the tournament squad - or at least put on the longlist, which would have at least meant he could have been called up in the event of a withdrawal.

Whether it really would have been right to include a 17-year-old who started just five Premier League games last season is debatable - but what's not up for discussion is that the England bench will lack a little X-factor.

One can certainly understand why Tuchel omitted Phil Foden and Cole Palmer - both performed well below their best last season and Morgan Rogers has been so good that there's an outside chance he even starts ahead of Bellingham (more on that later!).

However, it was odd that there was no room in the squad for Morgan Gibbs-White, given he was the joint-fifth-highest scorer in the 2025-26 Premier League - despite playing as a No.10 for Nottingham Forest, who spent most of the campaign fighting against relegation. Would such an in-form player not have been a more menacing option off the bench than Eberechi Eze, who only seems to play well against Tottenham Hotspur and made no impact after coming on for Arsenal in the Champions League final?

Eze's club-mate, Noni Madueke, was just as ineffective against a tiring Paris Saint-Germain defence in Budapest, as it seems his only real attribute is provoking penalty claims - which is why Saka's Achilles problem is so worrying. Madueke's pace may pose problems but, as we saw against Costa Rica, he certainly can't finish.

On the opposite flank, Marcus Rashford's return to form at Barcelona is a major boost, while Anthony Gordon had such an underwhelming club campaign that Newcastle felt they could do without him for the final few games before his own move to Camp Nou was confirmed - to the absolute bemusement of so many neutral observers.

Granted, Gordon looked lively against the mighty Costa Rica, but the bottom line is that England don't really have any real game-changers in reserve, attackers capable of doing something radically different to those they're replacing - which is precisely why Ngumoha's performance against New Zealand provided so much food for thought.

After the dismal 1-0 loss to Japan back in March, Tuchel was asked in his post-match interview on ITV if England had become too dependent upon Kane, who had missed the friendly at Wembley through injury. "Well, why would Argentina not rely on (Lionel) Messi or Portugal not rely on Cristiano Ronaldo?" Tuchel countered. "This is totally normal.

"In the absence of Harry Kane, we don't have the same threat. But Bayern Munich in the absence of Harry Kane don’t have the same threat. No team in the world has the same threat."

And one can understand Tuchel's point: if you take the most prolific player out of any team, it's going to make it more difficult for them to score goals. However, there is simply no disguising that England are more reliant than most World Cup contenders on their talisman.

Aside from the fact that Kane accounts for more than half of the squad's international goals, the principal problem is that neither of his understudies are anywhere near his level.

Ollie Watkins finished the season well for Aston Villa, netted a last-minute winner for England in the Euro 2024 semi-final against the Netherlands and scored a close-range header against Costa Rica - but he's only scored seven goals for his country overall.

The other alternative to Kane, Ivan Toney, is coming off the back of the most prolific campaign of his club career - but in Saudi Arabia. What's more, his solitary strike for England also came all the way back in March 2024, in a friendly against Belgium, and his mere inclusion in the squad hammers home just how essential it is that Kane stays fully fit for the duration of the World Cup.

He really is England's answer to Ronaldo and Messi. But whereas you could argue that both Portugal and Argentina could win this tournament without their respective all-time leading goal-scorers, England most certainly would not. If Kane gets injured, England are done.

Tuchel has dismissed the idea that England are one of the favourites to win the World Cup. "We can't be," he argued on Tuesday, "because we haven't won it for so many years. We see ourselves as competitors and challengers. We want to go all the way but I don't think we are [among] the heavy favourites. There are proven winners in the tournament with more success."

And he's right. England are international football's specialists in failure. Time and time again they've been touted as potential champions ahead of a major tournament (usually by their own media) and, time and time, again they've come up short.

Even under Gareth Southgate (statistically speaking, England's most successful manager since World Cup winner Alf Ramsey), the Three Lions twice fell at the final hurdle. In fairness, at Euro 2024, they ran into a far superior Spain side after boring their way to Berlin - but there was no real excuse for failing to beat Italy in the Euro 2020 decider on home soil, especially given they took an early lead at Wembley through Luke Shaw.

It just seems that whenever the pressure really ramps up against quality opposition, England can always be relied upon to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. What odds they once again crack in a penalty shootout? Or Bellingham blows up after being benched? After all, Tuchel has vowed to pick the best team rather than the best players and while that stance has been widely lauded, even his squad selection provoked plenty of backlash, suggesting all hell could break loose if England start the tournament slowly.

Of course, the draw has been kind to England. They'll easily win their group. But would you really be confident about England even getting through a potential last-16 showdown with Mexico at the Azteca or a possible quarter-final clash with Brazil - let alone defeating France, Argentina or Spain on their way to winning the trophy?

England may have the players, and the coach, but they've also got 60 years of history weighing heavily on their shoulders - and it's once again likely to prove a burden too heavy to bear.