Nations League: Gareth Southgate in dilemma whether to include Harry Maguire in squad

The Nations League will begin next month. On Tuesday, England manager Gareth Southgate is expected to name the first national squad of 2020. The English team will play against Iceland and Denmark.

Ahead of picking the squad, Southgate has some selection headaches. One of them is whether to include defender Harry Maguire in the team.

The 27-year old was arrested last week in Mykonos due to a brawl on the Greek island. The captain of Manchester United pleaded not guilty in court on Saturday to the assault charges that were brought against him. As per reports, he is "fully cooperating" with the police.

Now, although nothing has been proven against him yet, the England management thinks picking Maguire in the national team might hurt their reputation.

On the other hand, England captain Harry Kane is currently in quarantine, after he went to the Bahamas. However, it is understood that Kane would be available for the Nations League fixtures.

According to BBC, Southgate would most probably bring in some new faces including Manchester United forward Mason Greenwood, Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish and Manchester City's Phil Foden. The squad for the next month's tournament is expected to be larger than usual.

Similar to the modified substitution regulations deployed in the UEFA Champions League, the Nations League might also allow more substitutions than usual.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has caused a massive disruption in the European football calendar. Euro 2020 has been delayed by a year, which means the tournament will have to wait until 2021. As a result, England has not played any international game since November 2019, when they won 4-0 in Kosovo to conclude their Euro qualification campaign.

England is scheduled to face Iceland in Reykjavik on September 5 before facing Denmark on September 8 in Copenhagen.

55 UEFA-registered nations are divided into four separate leagues. League A includes all the highest-ranked teams, while League D houses the lowest-ranked ones. Within each of the leagues, teams are further divided into four groups consisting of four teams each. However, Group D is an exception in this case, given that it has one group of four teams and another of three.

League A previously had 12 teams, but now it has been expanded to 16 teams.