Portsmouth loanee Dane Scarlett handed England World Cup boost - but Spurs youngster will need to rebuild confidence after tough end to Fratton Park stay

The now former Pompey loanee has been included in Ian Foster’s England squad for the tournament that kicks off on Saturday, May 20.

He will meet up with the rest of his Three Lions team-mates this weekend as preparations are ramped up ahead of their Group E opener against Tunisia on May 22. Games against Uruguay and Iran will follow, before England hopefully qualify for the knockout stages.

Striker Scarlett is expected to be heavily involved after helping the Under-19s to European Championship success last summer.

However, the 19-year-old might need to regain some of the confidence he lost from the latter stages of his Blues stay before making his impact on the tournament.

The Spurs youngster made 40 appearances for Pompey in all competitions this season, scoring six goals.

However, the vast majority of those outings (28) came under former Fratton Park head coach Danny Cowley, with his successor, John Mousinho, using the front man sparingly over the second half of the campaign.

Indeed, Scarlett featured just 12 times for Pompey between late January and the Blues’ season finishing on May 7. Only four of those were starts, while he was an unused substitute for the Fratton Park outfit’s final four games.

The Tottenham Academy youngster did score the winner in February’s 1-0 victory over Burton, after coming on as a 72nd-minute substitute.

Yet, he was the subject of abuse from a section of the travelling Fratton faithful when introduced as a 65th-minute subs during the boring 1-1 draw with Shrewbury on April 15.

That proved to be his last appearance for the club. Afterwards, Mousinho said: ‘I didn’t hear any of the chants.

‘Sometimes I do hear chants, because I was so wrapped up in the game.

‘In terms of Dane’s performances recently, things haven’t quite come off for him in the final third, but he’s trying.

‘The quality we see week in, week out and every day on the training pitch with Dane Scarlett is the reason he gets in the side and the reason we bring him off the bench.

‘We can see that, Spurs can see that and I think Pompey have seen that in glimpses this season.

‘Of course, we’d like a bit more consistency and a bit more of a threat from Dane, but our job is to try to build his confidence up and to make sure he’s confident going out onto the pitch.

‘I’d like to think that the fans understand that sometimes coming down to Portsmouth is a really difficult thing to do as an 18-year-old loanee.

‘It’s not always straightforward and maybe it’s difficult to remember sometimes what you were like when you were 18, so let's not try to forget that with Dane.

‘He’s a 18-year-old, he’s come down to Portsmouth, away from his family, away from his home and away from his club that he’s been at for quite a few years.’

Scarlett returned to Spurs with four goals from his 34 League One appearances for Pompey. That put him behind Colby Bishop (20), Marlon Pack and Connor Ogilvie (both 5) in the Blues’ league scoring charts for the 2022-23 season.