By Hughie Southon
It’s the dreaded international break when there is little for us to do other than worry about our league position and hope none of the Hammers involved for their nations come back injured.
Rice and Soucek on international duty
This time around 10 of the senior squad are involved in games which in all honesty are of little interest to most of us.
Qualifiers for UEFA Euro 2024 kick off this month in Europe, Gianluca Scamacca and Emerson will meet up with Italy, while Tomáš Souček and Vladimír Coufal are another Hammers pair to have been selected by their country, the Czech Republic.
Elsewhere, England’s Declan Rice, France’s Alphonse Areola and Germany’s Thilo Kehrer will hope to be involved in their qualifiers, while Hungary’s Krisztián Hegyi has received a first senior call-up.
Further afield, Brazil’s Paquetá and Morocco’s Nayef Aguerd will be involved in international friendlies – with the pair set to face one another in Tangie – hardly a match which in all honesty should be played at this time of the year when we have already had a World Cup break.
Frankly it does nothing for me in light of us having to resume against Southampton on April 2 before another home game against Newcastle just four days later and an away game at Fulham the following weekend.
Don’t know about you but I always dread the international break ever since Manu did his cruciate without even playing. This year especially, we need everyone.