Harry Maguire and Jack Grealish axed from England's Euro 2024 squad

Updated: 07 Jun, 2024 • 0 • min read

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Harry Maguire and Jack Grealish axed from England's Euro 2024 squad

England manager Gareth Southgate has decided to exclude Harry Maguire and Jack Grealish from his final squad for Euro 2024 in Germany.

James Maddison and Curtis Jones have already left the squad ahead of Saturday's friendly against Iceland after being told they are not in the final squad.

The bombshell then dropped that Maguire and Grealish had failed to make the squad.

On the exclusion of the experienced duo, Southgate said:

We've got some players who have been playing extremely well all season in the league and we feel other players have had stronger seasons, particularly in the last six months or so.

Attacking areas, in particular, we're blessed with a lot of options, and some different.

Manchester United captain Maguire had already been a doubt - having not played since April due to a calf issue.

Having hoped to be ready in time, the 31-year-old defender lost his fitness race.

The decision on Harry is totally about his physical condition and his recovery from the injury. There is no other reason as he is one of our strongest centre-backs.

Harry has made some progress, but it's been complicated and we wouldn't have had him in the group stages. There were too many hurdles to get through without being clear where we might get to.

Knowing we haven't got a clean bill of health across the rest of the backline, we need players who are fit and ready to go from the start.

Maguire has been a mainstay of Southgate's England sides for the past three major tournaments and has 63 caps to his name.

It was a really difficult call, you know how I feel about Harry, what he's done for England and for me as a manager.

Grealish, meanwhile, has had a mixed season at Premier League champions Manchester City.

The 28-year-old had suffered an injury-disrupted campaign in which he failed to hit the heights of his treble-winning form the previous term.

Whilst Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Maddison struggled to recapture his early-season form since returning from injury at the end of January.

Madders [Maddison] and Jack would have provided us with something different as well and they've been tough calls.

They're calls we've gone over and over and over as a group of staff to try to be fair and to try to use the right rationale.

We back our decisions but we recognise we could have gone a different route.

Meanwhile, James Trafford, Jarell Quansah and Jarrad Branthwaite are the other players omitted from the provisional squad.

ENGLAND SQUAD FOR 2024 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP:

Goalkeepers: Dean Henderson, Jordan Pickford, Aaron Ramsdale.

Defenders: Lewis Dunk, Joe Gomez, Marc Guéhi, Ezri Konsa, Luke Shaw, John Stones, Kieran Trippier, Kyle Walker.

Midfielders: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Gallagher, Kobbie Mainoo, Declan Rice, Adam Wharton.

Forwards: Jude Bellingham, Jarrod Bowen, Eberechi Eze, Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon, Harry Kane, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka, Ivan Toney, Ollie Watkins.