England host Bosnia & Herzegovina in a UEFA Euro 2024 warm-up friendly at St James’ Park, Newcastle.
This friendly is the first of two warm-up fixtures for manager, Gareth Southgate to assess his squad ahead of naming his final 26-man selection following their friendly against Iceland on 7 June.
Teams
Jude Bellingham is unavailable for England following his involvement in Real Madrid’s Champions League title success on Saturday evening.
Luke Shaw, Harry Maguire (both muscle) and Anthony Gordon (ankle) are ruled out, whilst John Stones and Bukayo Saka will miss the match for fitness reasons.
Bosnia & Herzegovina will be without Sead Kolasinac, Dal Varesanovic and David Vukovic due to injury.
When is Kick-Off?
England host Bosnia & Herzegovina at St James’ Park, Newcastle, on Monday 3 June at 7:45pm BST, live on Channel 4 in the UK.
Stat Attack
- This is England’s first-ever meeting against Bosnia & Herzegovina in all competitions.
- Bosnia & Herzegovina are playing away to England for the first time in all competitions.
- England have won their last seven warm-up friendlies before Euros tournaments (W7), with five of those seven wins by a 1-0 result.
- Each of Bosnia & Herzegovina’s last two goals in all competitions came via own-goals from Patrik Hrosovsky and Mykola Matviyenko for Slovakia and Ukraine respectively.
Prediction
With final squad selection needing to be named just mere hours after England’s friendly against Iceland on Friday concludes, I would be tempted if I was Southgate to use this as the experimental game and give players like James Trafford, Jarell Quansah and Adam Wharton a start.
England though will surely take this seriously after two difficult friendlies back in March against Brazil and Belgium respectively, so I do expect them to come out and try to play high-intensity football because their usual passive play won’t be enough if want to find form for a title challenge.
Bosnia meanwhile have won just twice in the last year and kept just one clean sheet in that time but they will have to be resilient and clinical, especially if they want a positive result here in a tough game defensively for them.
I however do expect England to take the win and depending upon the team put out, this could well be a routine result.
Prediction: England 2-0 Bosnia & Herzegovinaa