**Newcastle United had five players in the England squad last night as the Three Lions took on Japan at Wembley in the final World Cup warm-up.**
Only Anthony Gordon started out of the five Newcastle representatives, as Thomas Tuchel took a leaf out of Eddie Howe’s book and started the game without a recognised striker.
It was an experimental night for the German manager who used the last two games to get a look at some fringe players before making his final selections for the World Cup squad.
While the results of the friendlies shouldn’t really matter, [a draw with Uruguay](https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2026/03/28/watch-harvey-barnes-denied-england-goal-pantomime-villain-as-newcastle-trio-feature/) and a defeat to Japan are hardly the most inspiring results to take us onto the big tournament.
Brighton’s Kaoru Mitoma scored the only goal of the game in another hard-to-watch England performance. We really hope there’s more dynamism, intensity and heart when the games actually matter.
Anthony Gordon played well, at least, and tried to make things happen down the left for England, and seemed determined to get another international goal, shooting from anywhere.
It took until the hour mark for Tuchel to change things up, but when he did, he brought on Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento try and inject some life into proceedings.
Admittedly, by this point, I was watching over the top of my phone as I did literally anything else to try and stay awake, such was the level of entertainment on offer by the football.
England stayed on the front foot for much of the second half, helped by Tino Livramento down the right, but they couldn’t find a breakthrough on a night where [Anthony Elanga found Sweden’s](https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2026/04/01/mixed-fortunes-for-newcastles-world-cup-hopefuls/) in their World Cup decider against Poland.
Big Dan Burn made a late appearance from the bench, coming on alongside Harry Maguire on 84 minutes but he didn’t really impact the game much.
That left just Harvey Barnes from the Newcastle collection sat on the bench after having his goal stolen off him on Friday against Uruguay.
Now it just remains to be seen if Barnes has done enough in training and in that brief appearance against Uruguay to convince Tuchel to take him to North America.
We expect Gordon, Livramento and Hall to have booked their place in the squad. Dan Burn could go either way, though.