Ranking England’s current 16-man crop on One-Cap Wonder Club chances
There are 16 active, non-retired players who are currently also members of the England One-Cap Wonder Club.
Others may join those ranks this week. Dan Burn getting an England debut is a nice thing, isn’t it? But he’s 32 and if he doesn’t play both games in this international break you do have to (one-cap) wonder. Then there’s Myles Lewis-Skelly, who could easily be in the one-cap club in a week’s time just by getting his customary red card in England’s first game and being banned for the second.
Anyway, in the absence of anything better to do we thought we might as well have a little rank of these current one-cap wonders based on how likely or not they are to end their careers still in that particular club. You should be able to work out which way round this list goes, and it’s fair to say there’s a pretty clear cut-off point between ‘very unlikely to be one-cap wonders at the end of their careers’ and ‘almost entirely certain to be one-cap wonders at the end of their careers’. See if you can spot it.
We’re not taking the piss here, by the way. At least not too much. Hard when you have our reputation for snark – or as some of you prefer to call it ‘being a c*nt’ – and deserving of absolutely no benefit of the doubt, but it does still warrant saying that even one cap for England is pretty special and something the vast majority of people from me and you all the way up to Steve Bruce and Mark Noble will never achieve.
READ: Top ten under-capped England players
Now, on with the snark.
Tino Livramento
Unlikely to still be in the club this time next week, never mind at the end of his career. Already stands out in the modern one-cap wonder fraternity for his one cap having been a full 90 minutes of a competitive game rather than 13 at the end of a friendly against Australia/USA/Germany/etc.
One of only two among the eight players handed first caps by Lee Carsley not to also collect a second under his interim charge, but if we were betting on final outcomes we’d confidently back the Newcastle man to end his career with more than pretty much any of Carsley’s other Bright Young Things.
Especially Noni Madueke, but especially Angel Gomes.
Taylor Harwood-Bellis
Has been training with the full squad this week despite not being named in Thomas Tuchel’s main group, and it seems wildly unlikely Harwood-Bellis’ international career is done even if cap number two doesn’t arrive in this window.
England’s centre-back stocks are at an all-time historic low, and once Harwood-Bellis gets his move back into the Premier League in the summer following Southampton’s inevitable relegation, he’ll be firmly in the frame. Perhaps in the end, who knows, alongside his fellow current one-capper…
Jarrad Branthwaite
Already one of the very best players in the one-cap wonder gang, with pretty much anyone with a passing interest who isn’t in fact an England manager vaguely baffled how he hasn’t won several more already.
A lot of Branthwaite’s caps do somewhat inexplicably seem to have ended up in Conor Coady’s collection due, we assume, to some unfortunate administrative mix-up or other that’s been hushed up. No, you’re mental.
READ: 16 Conclusions on Tuchel’s first England squad: Henderson, Rashford in, Forest, LGBTQ+ ignored
Adam Wharton
A late Euro 2024 punt by Gareth Southgate who, but for injury, may already have left this collective and surely will do soon enough.
Lewis Cook
Genuinely unlucky not to be in this squad after another hugely impressive season with a hugely impressive Bournemouth side, but it is starting to look like the 20 minutes he got against Italy all the way back in 2018 as a 21-year-old is going to be his international lot.
Harvey Barnes
There are many worse players than Barnes who have had many more opportunities, with the really striking thing not just the fact that his entire international career amounts to 14 minutes of a 2020 friendly against Wales in October 2020 but that he has never even been called up to another full England squad before or since.
Does seem mad, that, for a player who has been knocking around the Premier League in vaguely eye-catching fashion for as long as he has, but does also highlight just how deep England’s stocks of vaguely eye-catching attacking players are.
James Justin
Injured and forced off at half-time of his one England cap, a nondescript 1-0 Nations League defeat to Hungary in that between-tournament spell where pretty much all England international breaks appeared to contain nothing but nondescript 1-0 defeats to Hungary.
Justin played the entirety of his England career at left wing-back and thus, as well as being in the one-cap wonder club, is also in another not-that-exclusive club of right-backs Gareth Southgate used on the left.
Eddie Nketiah
Nketiah’s stellar U21 record has not transferred into a significant senior career and it seems unlikely it now ever will.
There is a generation of lost England strikers who have suffered beneath the yoke of Harry Kane’s omnipotence, and while there were hopes that Nketiah might be young and/or good enough to emerge as a key force in the post-Kane world to come it now appears he is in fact an even more secondary member of the Solanke/Watkins/Wilson/Toney generation of Kane back-ups.
His England career currently comprises the final 17 minutes of an instantly forgettable friendly against Australia at Wembley in October 2023.
The silver lining there for a man who left Arsenal for greater opportunities at Crystal Palace (one goal in 20 Premier League appearances) is that he still has the chance to do the same at international level, with Ghana still an option given his lack of competitive action for the Three Lions.
Alex McCarthy
Never say never with goalkeepers. If you’re an English goalkeeper playing in the top flight you’re never entirely out of the picture. But it does seem very much on the unlikely side for a Southampton back-up keeper who has conceded 13 goals in the five Premier League appearances he’s managed this season.
First sat on England’s bench under Roy Hodgson in 2013 and did so six more times under three managers before Gareth Southgate finally took pity and gave him the second half against the USA in November 2018.
Mason Greenwood
Yeah, he’s not adding to those 12 minutes against Iceland in 2020. Sent home in disgrace after that game – along with Phil Foden – for breaking Covid quarantine rules and let’s just say that is not the end of his issues.
And we don’t mean his ‘attitude’.
Patrick Bamford
Collected his one cap in a World Cup qualifier against Andorra on his 28th birthday in 2021. Gareth Southgate made 11 changes to his team and gave chances to fringe players such as Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham and one Patrick James Bamford, who spent an hour running around in very clear desperation to try and take what even then was very obviously potentially his only chance in an England shirt.
Couldn’t find a goal, was replaced by Harry Kane just after the hour mark, and had to watch in bittersweet agony as moments later Mason Mount was upended to give England a penalty. How easily Kane’s 40th England goal could have been Bamford’s first and only.
No further chances came his way – he was an unused substitute against Poland in England’s next game of that break – and he’s miles away from it now having battled with injuries and poor form which have left him a bit-part player in Leeds’ current likely march back to the top flight.
John Ruddy
Unexpected England call-ups in your 30s are all the rage for Newcastle players these days. This one is on a slightly different level to Dan Burn, though.
Can go to his grave, though, knowing he never conceded a goal for England after playing 45 minutes of a 2-1 win over Italy in Switzerland just 52 days after England had gone out of Euro 2012 to the same opponents on penalties.
Nathan Redmond
Injuries have wrecked his season with Burnley, but it’s also probably fair to say that is not the only thing that is stopping the now 31-year-old adding to the 24 minutes he got against Germany in Dortmund back in 2017.
Nathaniel Chalobah
Now 30 and playing for Sheffield Wednesday it does seem like it is not overly presumptuous to suggest his time has come and gone for England.
Not all doom and gloom, though. Unlike most on this list, Chalobah can at least point with pride to having made his one England appearance in a genuinely memorable match rather than the usual tale of forgettable friendlies and long-forgotten Nations League box-tickings.
Chalobah has the distinction of making his one and only appearance in England’s 3-2 win over Spain in the first Nations League, a game that lives in all our memories for starting with Eric Dier’s Mad Tackle and ending with Chalobah’s 91st-minute introduction.
You don’t need to decide now which of those two events was the more memorable. It’s not a competition.
Jay Rodriguez
Has signed for Wrexham, which is about as good for mainstream exposure as you’re ever going to get in League One, but zero goals in nine games to date isn’t going to catch Ryan Reynolds’ attention, never mind Thomas Tuchel’s.
Carl Jenkinson
Eleven appearances for League Two Bromley this season. That’s not going to catch the eye of a manager who can’t even be bothered to leave Germany half the time, is it?
Jenkinson is one of six England players to have debuted in The Zlatan Game against Sweden in 2012, and one of three – along with Steven Caulker and Ryan Shawcross – so traumatised by the experience they never played for England again. Another, Wilfried Zaha, did manage one more game before deciding the Ivory Coast was less stressful.
Leon Osman also managed one more appearance for England to at least dodge the one-cap wonder mainstream for the cooler two-cap gang. And the other debutant was Raheem Sterling.