Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham have never looked better with England – while Declan Rice is a portrait of pain. And it’s proof that the Premier League needs a radical shake-up, writes IAN LADYMAN

One of the many and varied questions asked of Thomas Tuchel during this World Cup has become quite repetitive.

‘Thomas, how is Declan Rice?’

Rice, who is key to England’s chances against Norway on Saturday, arrived in America with a hamstring injury and continues to be plagued by the biggest summer of his life, as well as the tail end of the greatest domestic season of his life.

This is not that kind of injury. It is pain caused by a nerve caused by excessive play. Treatment cannot cure this. It can only be rest. But you don’t get that in English football, a landscape not exactly full of easy games.

Not the Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1 or even the Bundesliga. It doesn’t give the big players a chance to take their foot off the pedal or take a break from time to time. There is no winter break.

So players like Rice — as willing and dedicated as you can find — push their bodies through varying levels of pain and discomfort until someone tells them they can stop. Rice hasn’t reached that point yet.

Meanwhile, Declan Rice looks exhausted after a difficult season at Arsenal that left him with nerve pain

If he’s lucky, he’ll start this weekend in a melting pot in Miami, where he still has nine days and three big games to go.

Here in America, we saw Rice sitting on the bench with an ice pack on his leg after the DR Congo game. He had walked off the field in the previous game against Panama. He did not practice with the rest of the team at the team base in Kansas City on Wednesday. Tuchel spoke of him playing in almost unbearable discomfort. Sometimes it has been a portrait etched with pain.

So what we do know is that the curse of the English domestic season continues. Every England manager for as long as we can remember has mentioned this. It’s a burden.

Gareth Southgate observed with a mixture of astonishment and disdain our clumsy attempts to bring an international break to the program a few years ago.

His successor Tuchel didn’t even try to go there.

‘What’s the point of talking about it?’ He answered when asked by Daily Mail Sports Last season.

‘The situation will not change.’

England players generally did not lack stamina and stamina in this World Cup. That was shown when Tuchel’s 10 men pushed Mexico back in the final 20 minutes to win at the high-altitude Azteca last Sunday.

Some still struggled to achieve expected performance levels. So far some pretty big cracks have been covered up with results.

With that in mind, is it just a coincidence that England’s two best players at this World Cup are not playing club football in England?

Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham have just completed domestic seasons in Germany and Spain, where players are not asked the same tough questions week after week.

Kane and Bellingham played far fewer league minutes than Rice’s 3,099 minutes last season. While Kane’s points were 2,382, Bellingham, who missed part of the season due to injury, played with 1,917 points.

That says something in itself. Kane now plays nearly 1,000 fewer minutes in the Bundesliga than he did with Tottenham in the Premier League. This is a reduction of approximately one third.

He made 25 league appearances last season, compared to 38 in the final Spurs season in 2022-23.

Kane has never looked fitter or more energetic for England than he has in the last four weeks; Bellingham was magnificent, unquestionably the player of the tournament.

And of course, it’s not just about minutes played. This is what those minutes look and feel like at the time.

Kane has never looked fitter or more energetic for England than he has in the last four weeks.

Bellingham and Kane have played less than 2,500 minutes of league football in the 2025-26 season. But Rice played more than 3,000

Kane’s Bayern team won the Bundesliga by 16 points and lost one game all season. Bellingham and Real Madrid could not compete with Barcelona this time, but they still took third place, 14 points ahead of Villarreal.

League seasons for the continent’s top clubs are not as challenging as they were for Arsenal last season, for example. For Rice, it must have felt like every minute of every game mattered.

Kane’s Bayern Munich won 18 Bundesliga matches by three goals or more last season. In this, we won 8-1, 6-2, 6-0, three matches 5-0 and three matches 5-1. It tells a story.

Mikel Arteta’s side, however, failed to capture Arsenal’s first league title for two decades until the end of May. Every game was critical because it was, and that’s exactly why Rice started all but three of them. Only goalkeeper David Raya played more.

The Premier League may or may not be the best in the world, but it is the most rigorous. Over the years we have seen our best players arrive at summer tournaments looking out of shape.

Here England gained momentum at the end of their World Cup campaign, but this came from a bid for survival in Mexico rather than a major improvement in their football.

Tuchel’s team performed well against Croatia in one half, against Panama in 20 minutes, against DR Congo in 25 minutes, and had sporadic starts at Azteca where they could have easily fallen behind in the first half.

It feels like the wrong time to be critical, but objective analysis only leads us down that path. After all, how many England players have ever played the kind of football that could win the World Cup?

Kane (pictured with his wife Kate) had an easy time in the club’s season last month, with Bayern Munich finishing the Bundesliga title with a few substitute appearances.

Thomas Tuchel’s team has played well in terms of spells, but how many of his squad have actually achieved World Cup-winning form?

We know Kane and Bellingham, but who else?

Maybe Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly. Maybe City’s new signing Elliot Anderson. It is difficult to find other candidates outside these four, and at times it has been difficult to escape the familiar feeling that many have arrived in the heat of the Premier League battle with their best football left behind.

It’s not a comprehensive argument. There are exceptions and Norway’s in-form and firing striker Erling Haaland is one of them. He played almost 3,000 minutes in the league for City last season.

However, there is a history of English players disappearing into the pit of fatigue during World Cups that is hard to ignore. Players like Wayne Rooney will tell you everything.

On the continent they laugh at England not stopping the season in the middle of winter. Even Kane was teasing us about it on social media, often in winter sun loungers.

The Premier League tried this but seemingly failed. The FA Cup came our way for a start.

We have completely eliminated our two domestic cup competitions to the point where the only way to free up some space in the calendar would be to reduce the number of teams in the Premier League to 18.

There is a strong argument for this. The underlying quality has been dismal for some time. But it takes the votes of 14 Premier League clubs to make it happen, and when was the last time we saw a Türkiye vote for Christmas?

Elliot Anderson (centre), who has moved to New Man City, is one of a handful of England stars who do not appear to be exhausted from their best form thanks to the Premier League schedule

Frankly, it’s a laudable idea, but it will never be implemented.

So the bed English football has made for itself is the bed currently made by its best players in America.

Some will argue that this doesn’t matter. Why would we sacrifice or alter the fundamental uniqueness of our national landscape for the national team to have a better chance of winning something every other summer?

It’s a fair argument, but it looks like we’ll need Bellingham and Kane at their impressive best once again this weekend in Miami.