England manager Roy Hodgson has ruled out the possibility of introducing new players in the final friendly match for the team before they play at the World Cup 2014.
The friendly match scheduled against Denmark at the Wembley will be the final match of the team before they head to Brazil. There have been suggestions that Hodgson may introduce a couple of young players in order to look at possible options in case some of the important players get injured. The former Liverpool and West Brom manager, though, has ruled out such a possibility by saying that he is unlikely to experiment in this match.
Since this is the final competitive match, Hodgson will want to utilise the same player since formation that he will adopt in the first group match. It has been suggested that even reaching the quarter-finals of the World Cup will be a success for England. This has been the troublesome stage for the team over the last decade, as they have failed to get past this stage in several previous tournaments. Hodgson has revealed that he has been looking at players for the last 19 months and he does not feel that there would be anything new to offer from the players not selected so far.
“I’ve been looking at players for 19 months so I don’t think there’s too many who will come out and really surprise me. I don’t expect in the coming months to be watching games and suddenly find players I have never really thought of jump out at me and prove to be a lot better. John [Terry] retired and we’ve qualified with 10 matches unbeaten, with [Gary] Cahill and [Phil] Jagielka. We’ve seen a very good performance from Chris Smalling [against Germany],” said Hodgson after the 1-0 defeat against Germany.