Ipswich Town goalkeeper Richard Wright must sit and wait to see if he will make his England debut against Argentina tonight.

Wright - the only Nationwide League player in the squad - missed out on a starting place to Arsenal's David Seaman when boss Kevin Keegan announced his starting line-up yesterday.

Now a place on the bench beckons for the highly-rated Wright - with the chances still good of him making his senior international bow as a substitute.

Wright is battling it out for a run-out with Leeds' Nigel Martyn, and with the matches running out before Euro 2000, Keegan could take this chance to assess his international pedigree.

Former Ipswich star Kieron Dyer, as expected, will fill a right wing-back role in Keegan's plans at Wembley.

Chelsea's Dennis Wise gets another chance in a central midfield role alongside David Beckham and Paul Scholes while Leicester's Emile Heskey is prefered alongside Alan Shearer up front to in-form Kevin Phillips.

Another surprise was the omission of West Ham's Rio Ferdinand, with Gareth Southgate, Martin Keown and Sol Campbell preferred at the back.

Argentina have a number of world-class players, notably goal-machine Gabriel Batistuta, classy midfielder Juan Veron and Beckham's World Cup nemesis Diego Simeone.

And Shearer said he was expecting a very tough game.

He declared: "It'll be tremendous if we win but it's not about getting revenge over Argentina. We want to win the game for our own reasons to start on the road to Euro 2000. It's important that we go out and set the right tone because it was a disappointing performance against Scotland.

"So now we will hopefully go out and put in a good display, play the right way and get everyone rowing in the same direction, cheering on England and looking forward to Euro 2000.

"It's a great time for people to stake their claim for a place and that's what these games are for - to give answers to systems and players, and to make sure that when we go into the tournament, we are ready to hopefully win it."

Kick off tonight is 8pm.

England under 21s beat their Argentinian counterparts 1-0 at Fulham's Craven Cottage last night thanks to Lee Hendrie's goal.

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