Kobbie Mainoo was unable to force his way into England\u2019s third-place playoff against France on Saturday, with injury denying him one last opportunity to appear at the tournament.<\/p>\n
For Mainoo, it has been a frustrating summer from start to finish. He arrived after ending the Premier League season strongly with Manchester United and doing enough to be mentioned among the division\u2019s Young Player of the Year nominees, but that club form has not carried across to the international stage.<\/p>\n
According to reports, Thomas Tuchel briefly considered using the 21-year-old after the opening group match, when Declan Rice was only half-fit. Even then, Mainoo is said to have failed to impress in training. From that point on, further chances came and went, with the German coach declining to turn to him each time.<\/p>\n
The Bronze Final might have offered the cleanest route back in. Tuchel made seven changes and left out both Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham, suggesting there was room for rotation. Yet Mainoo\u2019s injury kept him out of the squad entirely, preventing him from even being named among the substitutes.<\/p>\n
His tournament has been marked by silence and patience. Mainoo has moved quietly through each post-match mixed zone, hood up and headphones in, and has often been among the first to take a seat on the coach for the return to the team hotel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mainoo\u2019s summer ended on the sidelines as injury and selection calls kept him out against France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-manchester-united"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}