Liverpool defender Joe Gomez has withdrawn from the England squad after sustaining a knee injury while training with the national team, it has been confirmed.
The centre-back was in line to feature for Gareth Southgate’s side against the Republic of Ireland tomorrow night, but will now miss the friendly – as well as Nations League fixtures against Belgium and Iceland later this week – as a result of the injury.
England coach Southgate told a news conference that Gomez, who has returned to his club, was “yet to have scans”, but added: “What was upsetting was to see he was in a fair bit of pain.
“There was nobody around him when the injury happened, so I didn’t like that element of it.
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“We’re all hopeful for him, but it’s not a good situation… We can’t speculate on the exact nature of the injury, it’s not possible until we’ve seen scans.
“My immediate thoughts are with him, because he has had some difficulties with injuries in the past, so we’re hoping as much as we possibly can and praying that it’s not going to be a long-term one, but we just have to see.”
As Southgate suggested, an exact timeline for Gomez’s recovery is not yet clear, but Liverpool fans will hope the 23-year-old is not absent for a significant period of time, with fellow Reds centre-back Virgil van Dijk already sidelined for the majority – if not the entirety – of the rest of the season.
Van Dijk suffered anterior cruciate ligament damage in last month’s Merseyside derby against Everton when the Netherlands international was the subject of a stern challenge by Toffees goalkeeper Jordan Pickford.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp this week spoke out about scheduling concerns, saying they would lead to players getting injured more frequently than ever before.
Southgate said: “We know the load [Joe’s] had in the last six weeks, so we gave him and the lads who’d been involved in European matches an extra day’s recovery. And yet still something like this has happened.”
