Pulisic, Mount, James, Kanté, Zouma, Koundé get international call-ups

There’s an international break coming up after this weekend, and while some players will be prevented from joining up with their national teams and traveling to countries on the UK’s “red-list” — still a pandemic, y’all — many others will be called into action, as is usually the case for the Chelsea squad.

The first few of those names have already been announced, with the USA calling up Christian Captain America Pulisic, England calling up Mason Mount and Reece James, and France calling up N’Golo Kanté, Kurt Zouma, and Jules Koundé — though only one of the latter two is likely to be a Chelsea player by the time these internationals come around.

Pulisic has been isolating due to a positive COVID test, but presumably will be clear to travel by next week. The bigger news for the US is that Ricardo Pepi has chosen to represent them instead of Mexico, which is quite a coup. The 18-year-old rising star is one to watch for a future European transfer, too.

For England, it’s interesting to note that Ben Chilwell didn’t get the call after being summarily ignored by Gareth Southgate during Euro 2020/1 as well, and being the only non-goalkeeper in the England squad other than Conor Coady to not play even a single minute during the tournament. Chilwell has yet to feature for Chelsea so far this season either.

Lastly, for France, we of course have N’Golo Kanté going and one of our center backs — either Zouma or Koundé, depending on how the next few days play out. (Probably the latter.) Somewhat newsworthy to note that Olivier Giroud has been snubbed, possibly signaling his decade-long France career just five goals shy of Thierry Henry’s all-time goalscoring record.