England head coach Thomas Tuchel says reports about the state of the pitch for his team’s friendly against New Zealand will not influence which players are involved.
The Daily Mail, external said the playing surface for the match at the Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was a ‘plug and play’ pitch laid just a week ago.
Several pitches for World Cup matches are being played in stadiums that usually have artificial surfaces but which have been relaid with grass.
Travelling ground staff from the Football Association were reported to be liaising with the venue over the pitch which appeared in pictures to be slightly disjointed in parts.
England have no injury concerns and despite the start of the World Cup being so close, Tuchel said the condition of the pitch “will not affect my team selection”. He said that he has “heard” it “will be OK”.
“I saw a photo from a journalist which made me a little bit worried and concerned, but let’s decide when we are there,” Tuchel told a news conference on Friday.
“If there are any issues, we can always react to it. The plan is to play 45 minutes with two complete teams, to expose everyone to the same amount of minutes.
“Then we can continue for the next three days with the same load of training. That is the plan and at the moment we are sticking to it.”
England are in Florida for a pre-World Cup camp in West Palm Beach and will play New Zealand on Saturday (21:00 BST).
The game is the first of two warm-ups, with the other being against Costa Rica on 10 June (21:00 BST), before the World Cup officially starts on 11 June.
England trained with 27 players on Friday in a session which did not include Arsenal players Eberechi Eze, Noni Madueke, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka as they were involved in the Champions League final on 30 May.
Premier League players Josh King, Rio Ngumoha, Ethan Nwaneri, Alex Scott and Jason Steele have been training with Tuchel’s squad to boost numbers.
Goalkeeper Dean Henderson also trained having joined the squad following Crystal Palace’s victory in the Conference League final.
