William Saliba misses France training with muscular issue

Arsenal’s William Saliba missed France’s training session on Wednesday with muscular pain, according to a report.

L’Equipe (via GFFN) reported on Wednesday that William Saliba was set to miss France’s training session on Wednesday with muscular pain.

Saliba wasn’t the only one, with Dayot Upamecano also missing the session with a similar issue.

The two centre-backs had started together for France in their opening group game, but they seemingly face a race against time to return for Friday’s match against the Netherlands.

Saliba will hope the problem isn’t anything that could keep him out of Friday’s game, as this looked like his opportunity to break into the France starting lineup on a more regular basis.

After a long period of Didier Deschamps preferring to start Upamecano alongside Ibrahima Konate, he finally opted to pick Saliba for his first major international tournament start on Monday.

“If I played Saliba, it’s because I thought he was more ready than Konate for such a match,” Deschamps explained afterwards.

“I don’t want to lose anyone either, we will need everyone. They (Saliba and Upamecano) have 120 minutes together for the France national team, it’s not a lot.

“But they have this ability to be very solid in one-on-one [situations], even if there were some clearances that they could improve on, they exuded a lot of strength and calmness. We needed that against such an opponent.”

If Saliba isn’t ready for Friday’s game and Konate comes back in, he’ll have to win his spot back later in the tournament. That might not be easy.