Bukayo Saka's Struggles Highlight England's Wing Dilemma

Bukayo Saka looks spent. Not subdued, not quiet. Spent.

That was the stark message from Gary Neville and Ian Wright as concern over England’s right flank hardened into something more serious than a tactical debate. This is now about a body creaking under the weight of a relentless season and a World Cup campaign that may be asking too much of one of Gareth Southgate’s most important players.

Saka has been carrying a persistent Achilles problem, an issue the FA’s medical team has had to track carefully throughout the tournament in North America. The numbers tell their own story: he has appeared in all three group games, but only from the bench, his minutes carefully rationed by Thomas Tuchel.

“Bukayo Saka doesn’t look right at all,” he said. “He’s usually the boy that's bubbling and smiling, he's got that competitive edge to him, but he's not right and that's a concern to us, I think.”

This is not the Saka who normally skips into tournaments looking like he’s playing in the park. This is a 24-year-old who has been pushed to the edge by a brutal domestic campaign, then asked to go again on the biggest stage.

Wright went even further. He questioned whether England should have brought Saka at all.

The Arsenal winger had already admitted he was “happy to gamble” with his fitness. It shows. Wright sees a player who looks drained, both from the Premier League run-in — where his minutes were heavily managed — and from months of struggling to complete 90 minutes.

“We're going into a World Cup, and still not starting the first few games, only starting when we're three games in, and still isn't looking like the Saka that we know – this guy needs a break,” Wright said.

That line cuts to the heart of England’s dilemma. Rest him and you lose one of your most reliable match-winners. Play him and you risk breaking him.

The worry doesn’t stop with Saka. Neville, Wright and Roy Keane all circled the same problem: England’s wingers, as a unit, are nowhere near the level required for the knockout stages.

Anthony Gordon has had chances. So has Noni Madueke. Neither has seized the shirt. The flanks, usually such a weapon for England, have instead felt like dead space, with the team increasingly reliant on Jude Bellingham’s bursts from midfield or Harry Kane’s ruthless finishing to dig them out of trouble.

“The wingers need to grab their opportunity. These players haven't quite grabbed their opportunity yet,” he said. “In the group games, you can maybe slip up in one of them, but now at least one of them has to start turning up.”

That’s the crux of it. Group-stage drift is survivable. Knockout football is not so forgiving.

England now head to Atlanta to face DR Congo in the last-32, a tie that looks manageable on paper but carries all the usual jeopardy of tournament football. Beneath the immediate task, though, everyone is already tracing the possible route through the bracket.

If England do their job, the path is clear enough: a meeting with Mexico or Ecuador, then a potential quarter-final against Brazil. Beyond that, the looming shadow of Argentina, the reigning champions, waits in the semi-finals.

Wright, ever the optimist with a realist’s edge, believes Brazil are beatable.

“I think if we can get to Brazil we could probably beat Brazil,” he said. “But then I think we’d have problems after that. I said England would reach the semi-final from the start.”

Keane didn’t bother with caveats. When the conversation turned to Lionel Messi and Argentina, he was blunt.

“England would have absolutely no chance of beating Argentina in the semi’s, I just can’t see it.”

Strip away the hyperbole and the message is stark: unless England’s wide men wake up, the ceiling on this team is already visible.

Saka, half-fit and running on fumes, cannot carry the burden alone. Gordon and Madueke have to turn promise into product. Tuchel has to find a balance that protects his most fragile star while coaxing life from the rest.

The tournament is about to harden. So is the scrutiny. And unless someone on those flanks starts tearing games open, England’s World Cup might end exactly where their harshest critics expect it to — staring up at the champions, wondering what might have been.