Charlton Athletic defender Luke Young has been forced to withdraw from the England's standby squad list for the World Cup because an ankle injury is taking time to heal.

The 26-year-old full-back originally suffered the injury during a goalless draw away to West Ham United in The Premiership on April 2, but had recovered sufficiently to travel with the rest of the England squad to their training camp in Portugal earlier this week.

Young participated in his first training session with the rest of the players for the first time on Friday, but soon realised his ankle had not fully healed.

After discussing the situation with head coach Sven-Goran Eriksson it was decided that he should pull out of the preparations for the tournament.

Eriksson is yet to decide who to name as his replacement on the list for standby players, but one player that wasn't named in the original squad was Tottenham's Ledley King, who is now back to match-fitness and is sure to be considered by Eriksson if he needs another defensive player.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati