Jude Bellingham handed World Cup boost for England after being given No 10 shirt

Jude Bellingham has received a boost from Thomas Tuchel after being handed the coveted No 10 shirt for England’s World Cup campaign.

Preparations began at a training camp in Florida on Tuesday and the midfielder Kobbie Mainoo said the squad believe “100%” that they can win the tournament. With two weeks to go until England’s opening World Cup fixture, 21 of Tuchel’s 26-man squad are in West Palm Beach for a week-long camp and the squad numbers were confirmed on Tuesday.

Bellingham, the Real Madrid midfielder, takes the No 10 shirt ahead of his rivals Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze. Elliot Anderson, who made his England debut less than a year ago, secured No 8.

After training in temperatures that reached 33C, England players addressed the media and Mainoo was asked whether the squad believe they can win the 48-team tournament which begins next Thursday and runs until 19 July.

“One hundred per cent,” the Manchester United midfielder said. “I feel like everyone in the squad and the staff believes we can win it but it doesn’t come easy and the first game, the second game, we have to build and build.”

Jordan Henderson, who at 35 is at his fourth World Cup, talked through the standards the squad hope to hit by the time they open against Croatia on 17 June. “It’s about bringing the best version of ourselves, individually and collectively, and working every day to achieve our dreams,” he said. “We all know the talent this squad has and how we can hurt teams. But we know we have to be ready to do all the invisible work too.”

On the weather conditions, Henderson said: “It’s hard to really adapt but this week is about building capacity. We’ve got an amazing team behind the team working on how we cool down and recover. Hopefully that can give us an edge.”

Earlier the Football Association’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, said it was “going to be hard” for England to bring home the trophy. “It’s only twice in history that a European team has won a World Cup outside Europe,” he told the Performance People podcast. “There’s a reason for that. It’s very hard to win in heat, altitude, humidity and so on. Other countries are better at dealing with that because they’ve grown up with it. So it is going to be hard, but we’ll be doing everything we can to go as far as possible.”

Arsenal’s Declan Rice, Noni Madueke, Eze and Bukayo Saka, and the Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson will join the group late after taking part in European finals last week. In the meantime, Tuchel has supplemented his numbers by including Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha, Fulham’s Josh King, Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri and Alex Scott of Bournemouth as part of the Florida group.