Daily StarEngland's superstars face the World Cup axe if they try to duck out of two summer friendlies against the USA and Trinidad.
Coach Fabio Capello has made it clear he won’t be accepting any lame excuses for no-shows for the USA friendly at Wembley on May 28 and the game in the West Indies four days later.
“If a player doesn’t love to play for England then perhaps he should stay at home,” he stated. Capello said he wanted players to come even if they had gone on holiday – as he plans towards the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign which begins on September 6 with a trip to Andorra.
Now some of England’s top names – who might have thought they were in for a nice, long rest following their part in the shocking failure to qualify for the Euroepean Championships - might be rethinking their summer plans.
Italian Capello has already shown he is a hard task-master with a tough new regime which has included a ban on WAGs, mobiles phones, computer games and an order for the players to wear suits and eat together.
Turning to who he expected to be available for the friendlies, Capello said: "Some of them would have been on holiday for a week.
"But these are all things to overcome because we need to do our tests and try things.
"These games are very important, first of all because we will have a full week where we can have many training sessions and try many different things.
"Clearly the league will be over by then and I'll have a good group of players at my disposal to work with.
"Like Fabio they must love the England shirt and that is all there is to it.
"If someone doesn't want to come and play for England it means they obviously don't love the England shirt enough. Obviously they must prefer to go on holiday."
Capello's crackdown will be complicated by at least one, and possibly two, English teams appearing in the Champions League Final on May 21.
Liverpool or Chelsea could face Manchester United in Moscow, but despite that, it seems certain Capello - who has only had two matches in charge - will not be picking a shadow squad like Sven Goran-Eriksson did for the trip to the States in 2005.
Meanwhile, the England boss also came up with a bizarre excuse yesterday as to why some young players in Lesotho were better technically than their English counterparts.
He said: "The good weather here allows players to work on their technique a lot more of the time, whereas in England, because of the conditions, you can't just work on skills, you have to run much more and work on physical strength."
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