John Terry has named the England lineup he would start at the 2026 World Cup, after delivering a rather blunt assessment of several of Thomas Tuchel’s decisions ahead of this summer’s tournament. The Three Lions will be aiming to end a 60-year trophy drought when they kick off their campaign across the USA, Canada, and Mexico on June 17.

As is often the case before major international tournaments, much of the pre-match chatter has focused less on who made the squad and more on who missed out. Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Terry claimed that only around 13-14 players in the 26-man squad are truly good enough, while insisting that Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw, and Cole Palmer should have made the plane.

However, after being asked to park his frustrations over the notable omissions, as he hopes there will be a method to the madness, the former Chelsea captain has turned his attention to those actually in the squad – and named his preferred starting XI. Unsurprisingly, it’s a selection that is bound to ruffle a few feathers.

Goalkeeper and Defence

IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters

There can be no surprises in Terry picking Jordan Pickford between the sticks. The Everton goalkeeper was Gareth Southgate’s trusted number one in every tournament he led England through, and he seems to have only got better with age after helping his side win their first-ever penalty shootout in the 2018 World Cup.

Marc Guehi and Reece James are among the best players in their positions, and with Terry well-versed on the latter’s talents from their time together at Stamford Bridge, those decisions were also likely a no-brainer. He has settled for Nico O’Reilly at left-back, though believes Luke Shaw’s experience could have helped him out.

The only real surprise, however, is that he’s picked Ezri Konsa – fresh off winning the Europa League final with Aston Villa – over John Stones, despite Morgan’s instructions that his team should be picked on the unlikely basis that everyone’s fit.

Midfield

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Most people are starting to come to terms with the fact that Tuchel has a very clear footballing identity, and therefore knows exactly which system players – and profiles – fit what he wants from his team. That is why Morgan Rogers looks set to usurp Jude Bellingham in the attacking midfield role this summer, although Terry would still start the Real Madrid man for his big-game pedigree.

Terry does, however, agree that Elliot Anderson deserves his place alongside Declan Rice at the base of midfield. A relatively new addition to England squads since around this time last year, the Nottingham Forest midfielder has been exceptional in an England shirt, delivering selfless, mature performances that make it feel as though he has been part of the setup for years.

In many ways, he is expected to do the dirty work and “do the running” so that Rice – widely regarded as one of the best midfielders in the world, having developed into a dominant box-to-box presence and a driving force behind Arsenal’s Premier League success – can be given licence to roam and dictate the game.

Attack

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Snubbing Anthony Gordon for Marcus Rashford is Terry’s final interesting decision. That said, some would argue the Manchester United winger has done enough to warrant a start under Tuchel, despite Barcelona deciding against turning his loan deal permanent, instead splashing out on his England rival.

Bukayo Saka takes up a place on the opposite flank, with no real competition for his starting spot there. Arsenal’s star boy had a quiet season last time out, but he’s still one of the most reliable chance-providers in English football, and his unpredictable nature out on the right pairs perfectly with Rashford/Gordon’s pace on the left.

Through the middle, was there ever any doubt that it would be Harry Kane? With 67 goals for club and country since the start of the 2025/26 campaign, no striker is putting up numbers as high as his, and there’s a reason he’s among the favourites for October’s Ballon d’Or. See Terry’s lineup below:

Home Crowd

Liverpool are set to pull off a transfer coup as they close in on a deal to sign 16-year-old midfielder Xavier Parker from Manchester City, according to The Secret Scout.

Liverpool may have only recently appointed Andoni Iraola as the club’s new manager, but work is already underway on strengthening a squad that seriously underperformed last season.

The Reds would have been expecting to strongly defend their 2024-25 Premier League title, but instead they finished fifth and 25 points behind champions Arsenal, which led to the dismissal of Arne Slot.

With key members of the dressing room already on their way out in Andy Robertson, who has joined Tottenham Hotspur, Ibrahima Konate and Mohamed Salah, a freshening up of the squad and replacing those big voices will be a priority during the summer transfer window.

As well as looking at how they can support Iraola in terms of boosting the first-team, the Reds will be looking at how they can secure some top teenage talents for the future too.

The emergence of 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha is a sign of how vital youth recruitment can be, and club chiefs will be looking for similar talents to the talented winger who can make an impact in the first team despite their tender years.

Xavier Parker Set to Join Liverpool

via Reuters

One of those exciting young talents looks set to be Manchester City’s Xavier Parker, according to Secret Scout.

Posting on X on Wednesday morning, the 16-year-old is expected to leave City and join Liverpool when his contract expires at the end of this month.

Reds chiefs are already in talks with the teenager’s representatives over contract terms, with both parties wanting to complete a move.

Parker is a Liverpool fan, which will only fuel his desire to make the switch to Anfield.

Liverpool Locked in Talks to Sign Yan Diomande

via Reuters

One teenager who would be joining to boost the first-team immediately would be RB Leipzig winger Yan Diomande.

According to Fabrizio Romano, Liverpool are ‘really pushing’ to bring the exciting young attacker to Anfield following an outstanding breakthrough season for the Bundesliga club.

FSG are said to have offered an important salary to the Ivory Coast international to convince him to move to the Premier League, with Paris Saint-Germain also interested in his services.

In European football, there are two transfer windows every season. These windows are the only time that clubs are allowed to sign contracted players – free agents can be signed at any time of the season. Players can be bought permanently from another club or brought in temporarily on loan.

Due to the ludicrous amounts of money in sports nowadays, these windows give soccer clubs a chance to recklessly spend their millions. Arguably, no league has proven themselves to be as good at spending money on players that turn out to be pretty much useless as the English Premier League.

The criteria for a bad signing consists of four main factors: price, expectation, success on the pitch, and longevity with the club. Usually, one or two of these factors can justify the transfer if the others are bad, but there’s not one case on this list where you can look at the move and go ‘Actually, that wasn’t that bad.’

Ranking factors

• Games that the player managed to feature in.
• The total money spent on the player – transfer fee/wages.
• How much return on investment the club received.

Some honourable mentions are players like Fernando Torres and Mario Balotelli. They have both had more than respectable careers, but their big-money moves to Chelsea and Liverpool respectively didn’t live up to expectations. However, they weren’t quite as bad as this group though.

20

Eric Djemba-Djemba

£4.1m to Manchester United

The Cameroonian is a regular custodian of these lists, but, even considering the player that he turned out to be, his price tag wasn’t a huge hit for the Red Devils. He was 21 when he signed for the club, and he was potentially being lined up to replace club legend, and captain, Roy Keane.

That never came to be, and his former teammate, Rio Ferdinand, succinctly summed up the midfielder’s time with the club when he was asked about Djemba’s time at United. His response, on the Filthy Fellas podcast, was: “He’s a nice guy, man.” A rather dismissive way to talk about a former teammate, as a player.

19

Davy Klaassen

£23.6m to Everton

The Dutch midfielder was the epitome of the Toffees’ bad spending over the last decade. He joined the club from Ajax in the summer of 2017. The Dutch side is renowned for the ability to produce good technical footballers, but Davy Klaassen didn’t prove to be one of them.

In total, he started just three matches in the Premier League for Everton and came off the bench in four other league games. He left the club the following summer to join German club Werder Bremen. This move, plus going back to Ajax and joining Inter Milan in the summer of 2023, showed there was a good player there; it just didn’t work at Everton.

18

Wesley Fofana

£75m to Chelsea

You can imagine just how loaded Chelsea have been throughout most of the Premier League era with how many times they’ve appeared so far, and there’s more to come. Wesley Fofana, at one time, looked like one of the best young defenders that the Premier League had to offer. The only concern was his injury record.

Fofana, one of the most expensive centre-backs in football history, had suffered serious injuries leading up to his move to Chelsea, and it’s become even worse since joining them. The 24-year-old signed for the club at the end of the 2022 summer transfer window, and he’s only played in 54 league games since.

17

Jack Grealish

£100m to Manchester City

After years of strutting his stuff for Aston Villa – and with everyone eventually tiring of the endlessly repeated statistic about him being the most-fouled player in the Premier League season after season – Jack Grealish finally secured a £100 million move to Manchester City in 2021.

It felt deserved, and he quickly justified the hype by helping the Cityzens to an unprecedented treble in just his second season. But the two campaigns that followed were flat, and his swagger all but disappeared. Across those final two league seasons at the Etihad, he managed only four goals – a meagre return for a nine-figure signing who was expected to deliver consistent impact. His days at Man City look numbered after he spent the 2025/26 season on loan at Everton.

16

Nicolas Pepe

£72m to Arsenal

The Ivory Coast international certainly came with great expectation, but he struggled to live up to the club’s record fee at the time. That record was broken in the summer transfer window of 2023 when they signed midfielder Declan Rice from fellow Premier League team West Ham United.

By no means was Pepe an awful player for the Gunners; he scored 16 league goals over his three Premier League seasons with the club. But, if a club is going to shell out money like that, they rightly expect a team-altering return on their investment, and Arsenal didn’t get that.

15

Jack Rodwell

£11.3m to Sunderland

The former Manchester City midfielder was a personification of Sunderland’s problems during his time with the club. Sunderland were relegated to the second tier of English soccer (the Championship) in 2017. The 17/18 season saw the club be relegated again, in which time he played two games whilst collecting a reported £70,000 per week, as per ESPN.

Even when they went down to the third tier, he was still set to make £43,000 a week before they mutually agreed to cancel his contract. Jack Rodwell will forever be remembered in that part of the world for the negative effect that he had on the club, and he – also regarded as one of the biggest flops in Premier League history – was immortalised in the Netflix series ‘Sunderland ‘Til I Die’.

14

Angel Di Maria

£67.5m to Manchester United

Angel di Maria has enjoyed a very successful career in the sport, with plenty of silverware to attest to his brilliance, but this is not a period he’ll want to remember. A move to England from Real Madrid looked to be yet another big step in his career. The opening month was promising. He won the club’s Player of the Month award, but he never rekindled that form after picking up an injury.

The winger later admitted, to the Spanish newspaper Marca, that he never even wanted to join the club, and an attempted robbery of his home in February 2015 made his desire to stay at the club even less. He was bought by Paris Saint-Germain a year after joining.

13

Tanguy Ndombele

£63m to Tottenham

Signed in 2019 for a then-club-record fee, Ndombele showed glimpses of his talent but never found consistency. His work rate and fitness were repeatedly criticised by managers, and he was loaned out multiple times. Despite the massive outlay, Spurs failed to get the best out of him, making Ndombele one of their worst-ever signings.

Ndombele’s failings seemed to be caused all by himself, too. He had all the ability in the world, but his attitude was what separated him from becoming world-class. He was Tottenham’s highest-earner alongside Harry Kane at one point. But he was eventually released and signed for Nice in Ligue 1, meaning the north London club didn’t even manage to recoup any wasted fees spent on him,

12

Kepa Arrizabalaga

£71.8m to Chelsea

Chelsea broke the world record for the amount paid to sign a goalkeeper when they bought Kepa Arrizabalaga, in 2018. The then-23-year-old immediately had the weight of the world on his shoulders; expected to have the maturity to help lead the team to great things in years to come. It didn’t work.

What people might remember him most famously for is him refusing to be substituted in the Carabao Cup final (see above). Manager Maurizio Sarri was barking at him from the sidelines to try and get him off, to bring on Willy Caballero. The Spaniard refused, and his team went on to lose the final. He joined Arsenal in 2025 after they met the £5 million release clause in his contract.

11

Andriy Shevchenko

£39.5m to Chelsea

The flight from Milan to London seemed to drain the Ukrainian forward of all the brilliance that he’d shown previously in his career. The money they paid for him was a British transfer record at the time, and the striker was set to take Didier Drogba’s place in the team; that didn’t happen.

The aforementioned Drogba got back in rhythm and Andriy Shevchenko was never able to dislodge him. He scored just nine goals for the club. His career, prior to the move to London, was a flourishing one, which made it all the more disappointing that he wasn’t able to recreate those good times with Chelsea.