GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE: international football is still bad. The Three Lions reported this morning on their social media accounts that England and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Dele is withdrawing from the international side and returning to North London after picking up what is being called as “a minor muscle strain.”

An update ahead of today's training session: @dele_official has withdrawn from the squad due to a minor muscle strain picked up on Saturday.



He'll return to @SpursOfficial for further treatment, with no further additions to the #ThreeLions squad planned. pic.twitter.com/JSs0at5rzr — England (@England) September 10, 2018

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

This is, of course, the very last thing you want to have happen to your best players when they go out on international break. This is especially painful because Dele has been one of Spurs’ best players in the opening four games of the season, and Tottenham have an absolutely massive match against Liverpool coming up this weekend at Wembley Stadium.

No details were given about the extent of the injury, so we don’t know if it’s #actually serious, or if there’s a bit of Internationalitis in Dele’s knee as well, considering this rules him out of what is basically a meaningless friendly against Switzerland this week.

But either way, it reinforces my previously held belief that there was no reason to call up England’s major World Cup stars so soon after the competition ended — they need a break and didn’t get one. It’s not difficult to draw a straight line between that and Dele’s injury.