Palmer, Rice, and Rashford out of England squad.. Mbappe and Zidane in a highly anticipated meeting

To compensate for these absences, Everton player James Garner and Nottingham Forest player Morgan Gibbs-White have been called up.

The English will face "La Roja" at Wembley Stadium before their trip to meet the Czech national team on September 29.

Harry Kane and his teammates will meet the Croatian national team on October 3, before concluding their matches in the international window at home against the Czech Republic on the 6th of the same month.

The English Football Association confirmed in an update yesterday that Garner and Gibbs-White will be ready to join the rest of the national team members today.

The "Blues" striker, whose absence from Tuchel's squad for the 2026 World Cup sparked controversy, started the season strongly, scoring four goals for his team.

The former Bayern Munich coach said on Friday, after announcing a 27-man squad, that it is his "duty" to involve Mainoo, after not playing him for a single minute in the North American World Cup, which England finished in third place.

A Special Meeting

French national football team captain Kylian Mbappe was delighted to meet again with Zinedine Zidane, the new coach of "Les Bleus," 15 years after a trial he had while accompanying "Zizou" in the youth categories of Real Madrid.

The French star said in an interview with the Madrid-based newspaper "AS," "Years have passed since then. Zidane was the first to come to meet me, and he took me to the royal club's training center. I was 13 or 14 years old. It feels like an eternity has passed since then."

He added, "Today he is my coach in the national team. It feels like a movie."

The former Paris Saint-Germain star continued before joining his national team's gathering in Clairefontaine, "It is a great thing, and it has become tangible: we are starting a new phase in France (the national team), and we have two years to prepare for the European Championship, and this is what we will dedicate ourselves to."

When asked about this new era (with Zidane), the all-time top scorer for the two-time world champions admitted that it might be a "change for everyone," because the current national team combination has "only known Didier Deschamps" until now.

A day after Real's loss to Atletico Madrid (1-2), Mbappe refused to engage in a debate about the officiating, but pointed instead to "mistakes" that affected the course of the match.

The "Los Blancos" striker explained, "It is a step backward, that is for sure. It is a loss that is hard to accept. We wanted to win, and we were aware of what kind of match we were going to play... but the team gave everything it had, and we must continue to move forward because the season is still long, and we must stay on the right track."

The 2026 World Cup top scorer is facing criticism in Spain, where he has been playing for the third season, due to his weak defensive support.

He acknowledged that the "Merengue" players must "do other things" and "work" in "order to bring smiles back to Real Madrid" and "win titles again," after two years without winning major trophies.

Mancini returns to win

Three years after his departure following a journey that included winning the European Championship but also missing the 2022 World Cup, Roberto Mancini returns to coach the Italian national team "to win as soon as possible," starting with the UEFA Nations League challenge, according to what he said yesterday.

Mancini was appointed in late July to take on the rescue mission after the national team failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, leading to its absence from the global finals for the third time in a row.

Mancini oversaw the coaching of the Italian national team between 2018 and 2023, and led it to win the European Championship in the summer of 2021.

However, under his leadership, it also failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup after falling to North Macedonia in the European play-offs, which was already behind the start of the disaster in 2018 with the loss to Sweden, then again this year with the loss to Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving the four-time world champions out of the finals for the third time in a row.

Following the fall in the 2026 finals play-offs, Gennaro Gattuso resigned as national team coach, followed by the national team's general manager Gianluigi Buffon and the president of the Italian Football Federation since 2018, Gabriele Gravina, who was replaced by Giovanni Malago, the former president of the Italian Olympic Committee and president of the organizing committee for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.

Mancini said during a press conference at the Italian national team's training center in Coverciano (central Italy), "My principle is to have a team that imposes its control, plays good football, and always gives its best. We cannot always win, but we start with this idea, which is to win."

He believed that "in order to win, we must be a team that plays well and enjoys what it presents; this is my concept."

The former Italian international, who left the "Azzurri" suddenly in 2023 to coach the Saudi national team in a mission that lasted only about a year, explained while talking about his extended squad of 34 players, including Issa Doumbia and Mohamed Ali Zoma, that "if we want to build a strong team for the future, we must quickly identify who are the players capable of helping us, especially the young ones. That is why we want to see them on the pitch."

Italy will begin the rebuilding process by facing Belgium on Friday in Rome as part of the first round of the first group of the UEFA Nations League, before traveling to Turkey on September 28, then France on October 2.

Italy will renew its date with Turkey on October 5, but this time in Bologna.

Luis de la Fuente extends his contract

Spaniard Luis de la Fuente has extended his contract as coach of his country's national team until 2032 after leading it to win the World Cup this summer, following the coronation of the European Championship in 2024, according to what the Spanish Football Federation reported yesterday.

The Federation said in a statement, "Luis de la Fuente will extend his contract to participate in the next two European Championships (2028 and 2032) and the 2030 World Cup, which will be hosted by Spain in partnership with Portugal, Morocco, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina."

The 65-year-old coach, who took over coaching "La Roja" at the end of 2022, succeeding Luis Enrique, the current coach of France's Paris Saint-Germain, will continue his career with the goal of repeating the historic treble achieved by Spain between 2008 and 2012, which is winning the European Championship twice and the World Cup.

De la Fuente, the former youth team coach, deserves, according to Federation President Rafael Losan, a "long future" at the head of the Spanish national team's technical staff, after 14 years he spent with the Federation.

De la Fuente, who also won the 2023 UEFA Nations League and the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, is considered the most decorated coach in Spain's history, after leading the national team to its second title in its history in the World Cup this summer in the United States.

Losan said, "We are talking here about the most successful coach in the history of the national team, and after fourteen years he spent with us, Luis de la Fuente deserves this honor, a long-term future in the Spanish Football Federation."

The Spanish national team will travel to England on September 26 to play its first match since winning the World Cup, before hosting Croatia three days later in Seville, to begin its journey in the UEFA Nations League.

"La Roja" will return home to face the Czech Republic in Oviedo on October 3, and will conclude the international break by facing Croatia three days later.