On Saturday, 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha made his England senior debut, coming on as part of a fully changed second half eleven for the Three Lions’ World Cup warm-up friendly against New Zealand. It was a 45 minutes that allowed the youngster to show his flair and promise, even if there wasn’t much end product.
Even without that, though, being the most noticeable player on the pitch for long stretches of the second half as England held on to a 1-0 victory earned thanks to a first half Harry Kane goal
was enough to get Ngumoha named player of the match and certainly had fans of the national team talking about him in the aftermath.
“It was a crazy feeling,” Ngumoha said of his debut. “I was happy, I was buzzing. I knew that it was a first-half team and a second-half team so I was preparing. It’s good that I didn’t have much time to think about it, but I wasn’t too nervous—I just wanted to play and show everyone what I could do. And yeah, I just had fun.”
Having fun and impressing England fans and likely also the coaching staff will be the youngster’s takeaway, as it likely won’t be enough to get him in the mix for the World Cup given he wasn’t named to the long-list for the national team. Still, all a player can do is take the chances he gets—and Ngumoha certainly did that.
“I got a call from [FA director John McDermott] and he said, Would you like to be part of the training squad in Miami to help the pre-camp? And I just said yeah, of course. I came out here with an open mind, like when you get a call saying you could be training with the World Cup squad you never turn down the opportunity.
“I knew what my role was, to come out to help the other players but also to show what I can do, so it’s been great. On the pitch, obviously you’re training with the best players in the world so you learn every day, and then off it as well, everyone’s very humble and no-one’s over the top, everyone’s so nice, everyone’s so chill.”
England play their final warm-up friendly on Wednesday against Costa Rica before kicking off their World Cup campaign on Wednesday, July 17th against Croatia. Ghana and Panama are the two other countries in Group L, which England will be expected to top comfortably with most predicting a deep World Cup run.
