Tottenham striker Dominic Solanke has discussed his delight at being recalled to the England squad for the first time in seven years.
The 27-year-old, who moved to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium from Bournemouth in the summer in a deal worth £65million, is among those to be named in Lee Carsley's squad to take on Greece and Finland in the Nations League. The striker was last with the Three Lions in 2017 for a friendly with Brazil at Wembley Stadium.
Tottenham's No.19 has had a decent start to the season, scoring three goals in eight appearances, and will be looking to score his first England goal in the coming days. Speaking exclusively to England's social media channels, via the official Tottenham website, Solanke said: "[I've been] working, working, working. It’s been a good few years and it’s been a while since I’ve been here so I’m delighted to be back - back with the boys and representing my country.
"There’s still a few familiar faces and I know a few of the boys, and obviously back at St George’s Park. So it’s nice. It’s good."
Speaking about the moment he received the news, the striker said: "I actually had a game on the Thursday (Spurs' 2-1 win over Ferencvaros) so I was waiting for, hopefully, the call in the morning. I got the message to give him a call. I called him, we had a chat and notified me that I would be in the squad. So from that moment I was obviously buzzing."
So, who did Solanke tell the good news to first? "My mum," he revealed. "She was obviously over the moon. She’s followed my whole career so it’s a special moment for her as well."
Speaking at the England squad announcement at St George’s Park last week, Carsley said: “Dom’s a player I’m fully aware of and worked with in the past – he was close to being in the last squad. He’s taken that form from Bournemouth into Spurs, he has a lot of attributes I like as well as being a nice person. He’s extremely talented and good we’ve got him.
“Like all of the players it’s a challenge with the squad we’ve got. We have so many talented players. We always look at finding the balance, who complements who in terms of how we play and don’t get caught up in positions, it’s more the attributes and how we can potentially attack the opposition.
“There’s a lot of players that were close to being in the squad, the talent we have available to us. It would be quite easy to name a 40-man squad and justify having them all in, but the challenge is making sure we pick a competitive squad and one where we can win the two games.
“It’s just a case of using the next two camps to experiment a little bit and look at other players. The players who have been left out have all got a case to be in the squad but we saw the benefit of the other squad being fresh and feeling fresh and that it’s not a copy and paste.
“I’ve made it completely clear to the players that this is a short-term decision from myself. We have this camp and next to just keep playing good football for their clubs.”
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