England World Cup squad announcement: Ruthless Thomas Tuchel leaves big names out of 26-man squad

Ruthless Thomas Tuchel has left a number of high-profile names out of his England squad for the World Cup, while striker Ivan Toney has earned a shock recall.

"I love the tough decisions," Tuchel said on the squad being announced, and he has been true to his word.

Tuchel personally called around 50 players opn Thursday and Friday to inform them that they had/had not made his World Cup 26-man squad.

Furious Maguire posted on social media he was "shocked and gutted" to miss out on a squad Tuchel told players about on Thursday, with the steady stream of information allowing onlookers to piece together the personnel in advance.

On the absence of Palmer, Foden, Maguire and Alexander-Arnold, Tuchel said: "Difficult phone calls. I respect all of them. As players, personalities. All of them have been in camp, have been excellent.

"To reduce it was difficult, sometimes painfully difficult. Even in the phone calls I felt the emotion. I called all the players who were in camp with us at least one time. A lot of them deserved to be with us.

"In the end we went back to the evidence we had - in September, October, November, the leadership group and the team had very few changes in November... that felt we had a bit of fresh air, younger players who played with excitement, it was a good mix of young and old and brought the best out of the players. We want to recreate that spirit - that's why we rely heavily on the group that was with us in those three camps.

"For some it was a positional thing and not bring[ing] five No 10s and making them play out of position."