Ayden Heaven has reportedly declined a call-up to Ghana in order to focus on forcing his way into England\u2019s senior squad. The teenage centre back\u2019s recent performances for Manchester United have placed him at the centre of selection discussion ahead of the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Gary Neville hailed Heaven as the obvious player of the match in the narrow Boxing Day victory, and his manager Amorim publicly backed the youngster\u2019s progress. \u201cIf [Heaven] continues to play like that, it\u2019s going to be really hard to take his place.\u201d That faith underlines why Heaven is prepared to concentrate on winning a first senior cap with England.<\/p>\n
The defender\u2019s rise predates the current run of form. Long regarded as a top prospect at Arsenal, Heaven moved to Manchester United last February and has since attracted attention from Ghana\u2019s football association, per BBC Sport. Eligible to represent Ghana through a grandparent, Heaven was born in London and has represented England at U18, U19 and U20 level.<\/p>\n
England\u2019s central defence picture is unsettled, which opens the door for emerging players. Thomas Tuchel faces familiar balancing acts with squad selection. While England\u2019s attacking options are crowded, defensive reinforcements have been depleted by injuries and fitness issues. Chelsea\u2019s Levi Colwill has been all but ruled out of the World Cup with an ACL injury and Dan Burn is recovering from a punctured lung. John Stones continues to face the long-standing concerns that have dogged his senior career, and Harry Maguire\u2019s fallible fitness has helped create opportunities for others.<\/p>\n
Marc Gu\u00e9hi and Ezri Konsa are expected to form a reliable first-choice pairing, and Bayer Leverkusen\u2019s Jarell Quansah is a surprise favourite for the manager. With at least four centre back slots likely in England\u2019s World Cup squad, Heaven has a realistic fighting chance \u2014 provided he sustains the level that has impressed at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
The next phase for Heaven is clear: maintain form at club level and press his case for a senior England call-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ayden Heaven has declined Ghana to prioritise a senior England breakthrough while rising at United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,969],"tags":[1021,181,1200],"class_list":["post-5464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-amorim","tag-ayden-heaven","tag-busby-babes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5464","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=5464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}