England Nations League: Four inexperienced players ‘auditioning’ for Thomas Tuchel

The rush for senior players to withdraw has disrupted England’s interim manager Lee Carsley’s plans for the final two matches this week.

Experienced internationals Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish are among eight players who have withdrawn from the third international break of a busy season, most due to injury.

Some reports indicate that clubs are pressing for the amount of departures, while Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola criticized Grealish’s initial call-up for Nations League matches against Greece and the Republic of Ireland.

For players and fans, these two matches represent a strange period of ‘uncertainty’ before new head coach Thomas Tuchel takes over in January.

The five substitutions called up by Carsley, including Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers and Everton’s Jarrad Brathwaite, both 22, reduced the team’s average age to 25 years and four months, including five unrestricted players.

The average age of England’s Euro 2024 squad under former coach Gareth Southgate was 26.1, making it the third youngest team in the tournament behind Turkey (25.8) and the Czech Republic (25.3).

Carsley said he would put “his own stamp” on the England squad during his time as interim boss and would “refresh it” at every meeting. He certainly did.

He has turned to the “England way” players he knows well from his time as Under-21 coach, and despite the departures of Cole Palmer and Levi Colwill, there are eight players in the Euro 2023 squad that beat Spain 1-0. final.

But this is one of the least experienced teams in recent history; Harry Kane (100) and Kyle Walker (95) account for almost half the 400 in the entire squad. The UK has a 240 cap on high-profile withdrawals.

England need to win these two games to ensure automatic promotion to the Nations League top tier and ensure Tuchel’s first game is not a Nations League play-off rather than the World Cup qualifiers he has said he planned.

Tuchel will not be in Greece and Carsley said the German had no influence on the squad selection for this match and that he is “hugely respectful” of the work Carsley and his team are doing.

Ultimately, Carsley’s lasting impact may be that he follows a new generation of British stars quicker than expected.

All of this creates an interesting ‘audition’ for some of the players in this squad… BBC Sport takes a look.