Shropshire Star

England take on Brazil at Shrewsbury Town

Some of the world’s best young footballers will be on display at Shrewsbury Town on Friday night.

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England’s under-18s are taking on Brazil under-18s at the Montgomery Waters Meadow in a glamour friendly scheduled ahead of October’s World Cup in India.

Vinicius Junior, who recently joined Real Madrid from Flamengo for a reported £38m, is expected to play for Brazil.

England are due to field Liverpool striker Rhian Brewster, West Brom right-back Kane Wilson, and Chelsea midfielder George McEachran.

“It’ll be an exciting game,” said England U18s coach Steve Cooper. “A real high level game for this age group and one the local people will hopefully come and see.

"England vs Brazil is always an attractive tie but these are two strong teams going against each other and it makes for a really entertaining match.”

Cooper will use the game to firm up his thoughts on his first team, but he also wants his players to get used to each other.

“We want to get some stuff done on how we want the team to play,” he said. “We don’t want to play relatively easy games, we want to be playing hard games.”

England’s youth teams had a successful summer. They won the under-20 World Cup, the under-19 European Championships and the Toulon Tournament. And Cooper hopes to emulate those teams in India.

“We want to be, as you can see from the summer, as successful as we can in each and every event,” he said. “We really believe in this group, and on any given day if we can get it right we can win games. But we’re not taking anything for granted.”

Kick-off at the Meadow is 7pm.