Cole Palmer's Comeback: From World Cup Snub to England Squad

Cole Palmer is back dismantling Premier League defences and, watching him now, it’s hard not to rewind to the summer and ask what on earth Thomas Tuchel was thinking.

The little first-time flick into Joao Pedro to score against Fulham. The cold, low finish under Bernd Leno. The sudden burst of acceleration before he bent one past Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen from 20 yards. The way he drifted to the edges of Hull’s back line, waited, then exploded around it to slide in Joao Pedro again.

This version of Cole Palmer – sharp, arrogant on the ball, numbers pouring out of him – never made it to the World Cup. Because, bluntly, he didn’t exist last season.

The cruel dip that changed a World Cup

Palmer’s rise at Chelsea had been relentless. Forty-two goal contributions in 2023/24. Another 32 in 2024/25. He looked like a lock for every squad, every tournament, every conversation about England’s future.

Then 2025/26 happened.

The groin injury at the start of the campaign never really left him. The numbers collapsed: only 14 goal contributions all season, just two in his final 12 games. The timing could hardly have been worse. While others peaked, Palmer limped through the months when World Cup squads are decided.

Tuchel didn’t ignore a superstar. He simply didn’t see one.

He wasn’t watching the kid who had ripped Brighton apart with four goals the previous year, or the one who tore PSG to shreds in the Club World Cup final, in that same New Jersey stadium now ringed in World Cup branding. He saw a player short of rhythm, short of explosiveness, short of himself.

Tuchel still offered him a lifeline in March. Palmer started for England in the 1-0 defeat to Japan at Wembley and looked like a man searching for his own game in the dark. The trademark velcro touch deserted him. The shoulders sagged. He wandered through the match like someone who’d gone upstairs and forgotten what he went up for.

So when the squad list dropped and his name wasn’t there, the outrage belonged more to memory than to reality.

Did Tuchel regret it once the tournament was over? He didn’t flinch.

“No,” he said. “I was very happy with the squad selection. I had a lot of sleepless nights [beforehand]. But I had not one sleepless night about our selection because I was more than seven weeks with this group of players, and they were nothing but fantastic.”

Palmer 2.0

Now everything looks different.

Palmer has forced his way back into the England squad for the 2026/27 Nations League games against Spain, Croatia and Czechia. This time he arrives with form as his passport, not reputation.

“He has his numbers back,” Tuchel said. “He has assists back. He has decisive goals back. So that’s why he’s in the squad, and I think he has a point to prove.”

You can see that point in the way he moves. There’s a certain sway as he roams between the lines, as if he’s testing the structure of a defence with every step. One drop of the shoulder and a full-back heads down the wrong road. One quick burst and a centre-back’s angle is suddenly all wrong.

He doesn’t look like the classic No 10. The limbs are long, the joints angular, the running style almost awkward. Yet everything stays in balance, like a stick insect with a plan. The aesthetics jar with the role, which only makes him more compelling. His creativity carries a flair that feels oddly un-English – the ability to solve problems on the hoof, to improvise under pressure, to see passes that don’t sit in the coaching manuals.

For this England side, that difference is a weapon.

A crowded room at No 10

Palmer has not walked back into a vacuum. He has barged his way past serious competition.

Phil Foden, bright again at club level before a red card in the Manchester derby, didn’t make the cut. Fulham’s Joshua King came under consideration but stayed at home. Morgan Gibbs-White, outstanding for Nottingham Forest and central to their survival, still finds himself watching from the outside.

Gibbs-White, Tuchel admitted, was especially “close.”

“We can see the form that Morgan is in and he ended the season very, very strongly, and was the key player for Forrest to not be relegated. We can see him stepping up now. But it makes no sense to nominate three, four, five No 10s. It just does not help anyone.”

In that crowded corridor of creators, Palmer has muscled his way to the front again. Yet Tuchel made sure the invitation came with a warning label.

“It is one thing to be nominated, by the way, like with Cole, getting your ticket back in the squad,” he said. “But it’s another thing to perform for England. Especially Cole, he needs to step up when he comes and needs to show these kind of numbers and these kind of performances to get his place, to keep his shirt, to justify the decision.”

The last step

This is the gap Palmer still has to close.

His England record remains modest: two goals and one assist in 14 appearances. He can point out, with some justification, that he has only started six of those games. Yet the numbers sit there, stark, against the avalanche he produces in a Chelsea shirt.

Now, though, the context is kinder. He comes in fit, in rhythm, free of the injury that scrambled his last campaign and his World Cup dream. The frustration of watching that tournament from home, the sting of being left out, has clearly fuelled this resurgence.

Tuchel, in his own way, hinted at that.

“The quality of Cole Palmer, we don’t need to talk about it,” he said. “But [he needs] to show it … There are steps to be taken. The first step is to be nominated. The second step is to fight and perform on the highest level for that shirt.”

Palmer has taken the first step again. The second, the one that defines international careers, waits under the lights against Spain, Croatia and Czechia. Now we find out whether this reborn playmaker is just a domestic phenomenon – or the man who finally bends England games to his will.