Tyrone Mings has branded criticism of in a recent England training video ‘ridiculous’ by explaining the full story behind what happened.
Footage earlier this week went viral on social media after Maguire stopped the ball during a rondo session with team-mates Nick Pope and being put through their paces in the middle.
With Jordan Henderson counting out loud and his team-mates racking up over 40 successful passes, Maguire stopped the drill and the Liverpool captain stared at the defender, saying: ‘What are you doing?’
With Maguire coming in for plenty of criticism for his poor displays at club level this season, some took aim at him again in the rondo video.
But England team-mate Mings has hit back at the criticism and cleared up exactly what happened.
‘I think it’s ridiculous really,’ Mings told .
‘We got to about 45 passes and he stopped the ball and I can only presume, there’s no other reason to stop the ball at that point, it was to give the people in the middle a breather.
‘Once you get to 20 passes you are in for another one, so the two that were in there anyway were going to be in for another two when it got to 42, 43.
‘He’s actually giving them a bit of a breather to say ‘that’s enough, let’s start again’.
‘So to take a negative spin on that just shows people don’t always know what is going on and don’t quite understand the full context of the video.
‘But for social media these days the truth is sometimes far less exciting than making something up or sending something viral.’
Maguire and Mings line up alongside one another in the heart of the England defence in their friendly with Ivory Coast tonight.
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