Fabio Capello offers Owen Hargreaves ray of hope

Forgotten man: Owen Hargreaves has been out of action for almost 15 months
11 April 2012

England boss Fabio Capello insists there is still time for Manchester United midfielder Owen Hargreaves to earn a place in the World Cup squad heading to South Africa next year.

Hargreaves, 28, has been out of action for almost 15 months after major surgery on both knees to cure a tendinitis problem - but he is almost ready to return to full training.

United boss Sir Alex Ferguson recently revealed his 2007 signing from Bayern Munich is working well with physios and needs to regain the confidence needed before being ready for competitive football.

Capello, who is refusing to rule Hargreaves out of his plans, said: "Why not? He can because he has time to recover everything. He has to play. Players who do not play will not be with me."

The Italian added: "I spoke to him two months ago, I met him in Manchester and he was just ready to start training. But now he is not fit.

"He has six months to recover his good form but he needs to play. I will choose players that will be fit in May, the players that play all the games."

Hargreaves was England's player of the tournament for the 2006 World Cup in Germany but has had serious injury problems since - his last game for his country was against America in the season before last.

Since then Gareth Barry has established himself as Capello's first-choice defensive midfielder, although Capello likes players such as Hargreaves who can play in more than one position.

The England boss is "more or less" settled on his squad for South Africa and is hoping for a clean bill of health come the end of the season.

He said: "More or less, I know all the players. I follow the players and check on them but we have to wait.

"When I decide the 23 players that will stay with me, I hope the best players will be fit. This is the reason why I have to follow more players."

England will be staying in Rustenburg, after Capello's fears over the state of the training pitches were eased.

"The facilities are okay, there were some problems with the pitches but I spoke to people there and they will be okay for June when we are in South Africa," he said.

"We found Rustenburg was the best place for us. It is quiet, good for security, is close to the stadium where we play the first game - everything is okay."

Before that, Capello wants to play Egypt at Wembley on March 3, then arrange a friendly with Mexico.

He added: "We have to decide. We are speaking with these countries but have not decided yet. "I think we will play March 3 at Wembley, against Egypt, then we have to find the date to play against Mexico. There are some problems, I don't know if we will play Sunday or Monday.

"All the friendly games we played were against European teams and we know the style of these teams. We have to play against South Americans and African teams with a different style."

Capello was speaking at the unveiling of Barnet's new training facilities, which were constructed with the help of the Football Foundation.

"It's a fantastic place for training, I've never seen one so big in Italy," Capello said.

"Juventus or Inter Milan haven't got a training camp like this, it's incredible and surprised me.

"I'm very happy to see the young players and the women using it - it's very important for the sport."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in