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Bukayo Saka is one of England’s most important players. He’s also one of their most fragile heading into the World Cup, and Thomas Tuchel isn’t pretending otherwise.
England’s head coach confirmed on June 9 that Saka is still recovering from the Achilles injury he sustained during the national team’s March 2026 camp. The winger trained fully that day ahead of a friendly against Costa Rica, but he’d missed the previous session.
Not at 100%, and Tuchel knows it
Tuchel was blunt about the situation. Saka is “still not at 100%” and will need to be “managed” throughout the tournament. The coach went further, saying it’s “very unlikely” that Saka will start and finish every match during the World Cup.
The inability to train on consecutive days is particularly telling. At this stage of World Cup preparation, with friendlies serving as tactical rehearsals and fitness benchmarks, a player who can’t string together back-to-back sessions is clearly operating with a significant physical limitation.
The Arsenal backdrop
Saka didn’t just sit out after the March injury. He came back and played through discomfort for Arsenal during the tail end of their 2025-26 season, which ended with a league title. Arsenal’s approach was to manage his minutes carefully, rotating him in and out of the lineup to keep the workload sustainable. Tuchel is essentially inheriting that same strategy and applying it to a compressed, high-stakes tournament format.
Saka was included in England’s 26-man World Cup squad, announced on May 22. His presence on the roster comes with an asterisk that Tuchel is being unusually transparent about. This will be his second consecutive World Cup appearance.
What this means for England’s tournament approach
No other injury concerns were flagged in Tuchel’s briefing. A fully healthy squad around a carefully managed Saka gives England flexibility in how they deploy him across the tournament.
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