5 England U21 players to keep an eye on in the European Championship

#3 Fikayo Tomori

Fikayo Tomori enjoyed a successful season at Derby County

With a lot of focus on the England senior team’s defence – for all the wrong reasons – following their loss to the Netherlands last week, their U21 equivalents will be hoping to keep a much tighter backline in their own tournament, and one man who will likely be at the forefront of that is Chelsea’s centre-back Fikayo Tomori.

Tomori – who won the World Cup with the England U20 side in 2017 – spent the 2018/19 season on loan at Derby County playing under former Chelsea legend Frank Lampard, and he was a huge success at Pride Park, appearing in all 46 of the Rams’ Championship games, as well as all 3 in the Playoffs. And although Derby came out on the wrong end of the playoff final against Aston Villa, Tomori did largely shackle his England teammate Tammy Abraham during that game.

A commanding defender, Tomori excels at tackling his opponents – he completed 107 successful challenges this season, more than double the amount of his experienced defensive partner Richard Keogh – but his passing range is impressive too, as he completed an average of 56.9 passes per game, with an impressive 82.9% success rate.

With question marks around a lot of England’s central defenders right now, a strong showing in this tournament for Tomori could see him break into the senior set-up sooner rather than later.