Bukayo Saka's Struggles: England's Knockout Stage Dilemma

Bukayo Saka is carrying England to the knockout stages on one good leg and a lot of memory.

At least, that’s how it looks to those who know him best.

Gary Neville has sounded the alarm over the Arsenal winger’s condition, describing a player who appears to be running on fumes rather than the electricity that usually defines him. Saka has been nursing a persistent Achilles problem across the tournament in North America, an issue serious enough that the FA’s medical staff have been monitoring him closely.

Even so, he has been used in all three group games. Not as the ever-present starter he has become at Arsenal, but as a carefully managed weapon off the bench, with Thomas Tuchel rationing his minutes like a resource England can’t afford to burn through too quickly.

On the Stick to Football show, Neville didn’t bother dressing it up.

“Bukayo Saka doesn’t look right at all,” he said. The words cut because they come from someone who has seen enough tournament football to recognise when a player is off. Saka is normally the livewire: smiling, sharp, competitive to the edge. Now, in Neville’s eyes, that spark has dimmed, and the concern is not just technical. It’s physical. It’s emotional. It’s the sense that one of England’s most reliable performers is a shadow of himself at precisely the wrong time.

Ian Wright sees the same thing and has gone a step further, openly questioning whether Saka should even have been on the plane. The 24-year-old admitted before the tournament he was “happy to gamble” with his fitness. It shows.

Wright’s verdict is brutal but rooted in the reality of a draining season. Saka’s minutes were carefully managed during the Premier League run-in. He has not regularly completed 90 minutes for months. The cumulative toll is now playing out on the biggest stage.

“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 hangs over England’s campaign. Because if Saka, the dependable outlet on the right, is operating at half-capacity, what’s left out wide?

So far, not enough.

Tuchel has turned to Anthony Gordon and Noni Madueke in search of width, pace and incision. The response has been sporadic at best. England’s flanks have lacked their usual bite, the one-on-one dominance and end product that turn tight tournament games. The result? An attack leaning heavily on Jude Bellingham’s surges from midfield and Harry Kane’s moments of ruthlessness.

The imbalance is obvious to those watching from the studio. The wingers, Roy Keane insists, are drifting through the tournament rather than grabbing it.

“The wingers need to grab their opportunity. These players haven’t quite grabbed their opportunity yet,” he said. Group stages allow for the odd flat performance. The knockout rounds do not. “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.”

England head into a last-32 tie against DR Congo in Atlanta with a bracket that looks both inviting and unforgiving. Beat DR Congo and the path is clear on paper: a meeting with Mexico or Ecuador, then, if the seeding holds, Brazil in the quarter-finals and Argentina in the semi-finals.

It’s the kind of route that fuels optimism and dread in equal measure.

Wright, never shy of backing England, still sees a way through to the last four. “I think if we can get to Brazil we could probably beat Brazil,” he said, backing the squad’s depth and big-game quality. But he doesn’t push the dream much further. “But then I think we’d have problems after that. I said England would reach the semi-final from the start.”

Keane strips away even that layer of hope when the conversation turns to Argentina and Lionel Messi.

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

Between those two poles – Wright’s guarded belief and Keane’s hard-line realism – sits the uncomfortable truth of this England side: a team with a soft underbelly in the very area that once made them terrifying. When Raheem Sterling, Saka and others were in full flow at previous tournaments, England stretched teams, pinned full-backs, created chaos. Now, with Saka compromised and his rivals for the shirt yet to ignite, that threat has dulled.

Tuchel’s challenge is clear. He has to decide whether to keep gambling on a half-fit Saka, hoping his class can override his condition, or to trust Gordon, Madueke and the others to finally play with the conviction demanded at this level.

Because the bracket will not wait. DR Congo first, then the stakes rise with every step. Brazil and Argentina loom in the distance, but England’s real question sits much closer to home: can their wingers – and Saka above all – find themselves in time, or will a lack of width end another golden chance?