Watkins

The Sparks are starting over again.

After trading All-Star guard Kelsey Plum to Phoenix ahead of Sunday’s WNBA trade deadline, the Sparks are back to the drawing board mere months after declaring themselves a contender this season. In adding guard Monique Akoa Makani and first-and-second-round picks in the 2027 draft, the Sparks have a foundation to start building on young talent.

People with knowledge of Plum’s thinking confirmed to the The Times last week that she didn’t intend to re-sign with the Sparks in the offseason, forcing them to move on from her expiring contract and get as much value as possible to build from the ground up — again.

It’s no surprise the Sparks decided to blow it up two weeks after firing general manager Raegan Pebley, who had told The Times that she intended to keep the Sparks in contention through the trade deadline.

The Mercury’s Monique Akoa Makani handles the ball in front of the Liberty’s Pauline Astier at Mortgage Matchup Center on Saturday in Phoenix.

(Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

The return the Sparks got for Plum on an expiring contract is as good as they could have hoped for — a starting quality player and a first-round pick that might end up a lottery pick if the Mercury don’t make the playoffs.

The Sparks traded the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft to Seattle, who turned that selection into All-Star center Dominique Malonga, to acquire Plum in the 2025 offseason to try to end their rebuild. They finished two games outside the postseason last season and have struggled this year with Plum’s injury and a league-worst defense.

How soon the Sparks can attempt to contend again might depend on this year. If they get a high enough draft pick to take JuJu Watkins, should she choose to leave USC, they can build around her. If not, they are back in the same spot as 2025 when they got the second overall pick and missed out on the Paige Bueckers sweepstakes.

Watkins may choose to stay at USC another season, which would give the Sparks a second chance at her in the lottery if they aren’t back on their feet yet.

Since the Sparks will all but certainly miss the playoffs this season, they will have two lottery picks, giving them a chance to add some rookie-scale contracts to a roster filled with veteran deals. They have two players in Dearica Hamby and Ariel Atkins who are owed more than $1 million per season over the next two years, and Erica Wheeler is on the books for $625,000 next season.

They have young center Cameron Brink, the No. 2 overall pick in 2024, to build around. Despite rumors earlier this season, the Sparks decided not to trade Brink and are instead building around her. Pending restricted free agent Rae Burrell has had her best season in the WNBA this year, and if the Sparks don’t move on from her, she can be another key piece in the next version of the team.

Those two and former No. 4 pick Rickea Jackson were supposed to be a part of the next wave for the Sparks, but they traded Jackson to Chicago for Atkins this offseason in what now appears to be an ill-conceived attempt at winning this year.

Akoa Makani will also slot in as a starter right away for the Sparks at 25 years old. Last season with a Phoenix squad that made it to the WNBA Finals, she started 11 playoff games. She is also under team control until 2027 when she will become a reserved free agent.

Sparks forward Cameron Brink is pressured by Fever guard Lexie Hull on May 13 at Crypto.com Arena.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Akoa Makani will be one of the better defenders on the Sparks’ roster and is a career 41% three-point shooter. In her 16 games this season, she is averaging 9.4 points, 2.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.2 steals.

Phoenix’s first-round 2027 draft pick the Sparks acquired will most likely be the seventh overall, with a small chance at being first or second because of the WNBA’s two-year lottery odds format. Seventh picks in recent years have included Angel Reese, Aneesah Morrow and Veronica Burton.

The Sparks will be projected to pick around sixth without some extreme lottery luck, but even those two picks will make a big difference for a team with just one lottery pick (Brink) from the past six years of rebuilding.

Aside from Watkins at the top of the draft, Louisiana State guard MiLaysia Fulwiley, South Carolina forward Ashlyn Watkins, Kentucky center Clara Strack and LSU guard Mikaylah Williams will be viable young players.

With Plum off the books and expiring contracts for Nneka Ogwumike and Emma Cannon next season, the Sparks will have cap room to work with even with the hefty contracts at the top of their cap.

If they create a core of young players around Brink, Burrell and Akoa Makani, they will have another chance to get a rebuild right.

If you get out to Joshua Tree and the night is clear, look up. You’ll see not just the stars, but a massive swath of the Milky Way. It’s a reminder that the vastness is always present, beyond the city’s bright lights. And once dawn comes, the desert performs the same magic: long horizons, unfamiliar landscapes, the creeping feeling that we are small, short-lived creatures on an immense ancient planet. No wonder some people find it unsettling.

Not the characters in Claire Vaye Watkins’ new novel “Yellow Pine,” who embrace the desert in the extreme. They live at the far side of the Mojave Desert where California meets Nevada. Wherefore the pines, you ask? The book’s title is a wry joke — “Yellow Pine” is not a forest, not a tree. It’s a massive solar array slated to be built nearby in the Nevada desert. A ragtag crew of desert dwellers are hoping to stop it, or at least slow down the grinding wheels of capitalism that see the desert merely as an empty space for the taking.

Primary among them is Rose, a 30-something single mom who lives near the end of a very, very long dirt road in a cabin she calls Nothingness Flats. Rose works for an environmental nonprofit that has gone remote because it’s the pandemic; she often spirals at the state of the world. “Sometimes I think I can feel the planet just hemorrhaging under all this greed. Like it’s tectonic,” she laments.

Rampant environmental destruction notwithstanding, the novel kicks off with the joyous return of Miles, the guy who got away. He is an outdoor person, like Rose; has trouble fitting into societal norms, like Rose; and he is an ideal intellectual partner for her, bantering, well-read and ready to engage. Also, they have great sex.

Lest I portray this as a typical summer beach read, Watkins’ writing is in a special, different mode. Her latest books somehow cut past narrative traditions and portray plot and emotion more directly. Another novel might find Rose, after she decides she loves Miles so much that she wants to get pregnant, going to a doctor, getting tests, worrying about being almost 40 and what that means. Rose does none of that — she just suddenly deeply wants a baby, and that desire is vivid in the text. Overexplained storytelling is set aside for something that’s striking and vivid.

When I reached Watkins via Zoom to talk about the book, I asked her how she does it. “Partly it’s an intuition I have about what makes an interesting story,” Watkins says. “A story requires a lot of improbable decisions. Maybe they’re not great decisions, but the person doesn’t know that at the time.”

In “Yellow Pine,” Miles is not without some red flags. In my reviewer’s copy, I found myself scrawling “bad idea!” in the margin, trying to warn Rose about him. It gives the story some tension, and shows that our heroine isn’t perfect — she’s just doing her best under desert skies.

Rose lives in Tecopa, population 120, among people who’ve chosen the isolation, quietude, natural beauty and brutal conditions on purpose. Of the real-life people in these communities, Watkins says, “It’s really tough. The environment is extreme. There are no amenities. There’s no jobs. … I think there’s a refusenik quality to them.”

Nevertheless, some of them come together to try to forestall the installation of the solar array. They point out that “solar farm” is a misnomer because the land — an alluvial plane with Yucca colonies dating back hundreds of years, creosote rhizomatic rings even longer — will be scraped and fenced. What happens to the endangered desert tortoises is awful. These activists are trying every legal recourse and have set up a tiny camp at the edge of the property. Sweetly, and with little hope, they make a small community of people who understand each other and the desert landscape that others see as a blank space on the map.

“In California most of the biodiversity in the state is in the inland deserts, partly because a lot of the other ecosystems have been totally destroyed, you know? It’s a very alive place,” Watkins explains.

In “Yellow Pine,” Rose’s conviction that she should get pregnant grows to a point where she comes up with a wild scheme to make that happen. It is very funny, outsized and unexpected. It’s a small individual resistance to the impending destruction of the desert.

Watkins is very good at making a humorous turn at the end of thoughts, sentences, books. This is her fourth. Her debut, the short story collection “Battleborn” in 2012, set her on a trajectory of accolades; 2021’s “I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness,” was an L.A. Times book prize finalist. She is currently a professor of writing at UC Irvine.

“The thing I love about novels, writing them and reading them, is that it’s private thoughts,” Watkins says. “It’s this cool technology that we’ve come up with to deal with the fact that we don’t know what’s going on in each other’s heads and hearts and how painful that can be.”

She adds that a novelist’s job is to care about the reader. “There’s something really beautiful about, I’m going to do my very best with my part and then I give it to you, and I let it go and I trust you and I respect you,” she says. “I love the world when I’m writing and my books are like acts of love, partly because I really struggle. I’m not walking around loving my fellow man easily.”

When our Zoom began, she apologized for the noises outside — construction, dog walkers, gardeners. I couldn’t hear them at all, but I got the impression that those intrusions and distractions were weighing on her. “I feel like I have a very sensitive instrument,” she says. “I get a little agitated and the pace is really, really different.”

I had been expecting to reach her at an improbable desert outpost, like a Death Valley library with Wi-Fi, but instead reached her in Orange County. It’s for her job, and also as a part-time parent, much easier for amenities. It’s a busy town where there are lots of people, lots of businesses, lots of traffic, the hectic pace of modern life — but still, the desert has its pull. She splits her time between the two locales.

“Yellow Pine” is a testament to her beloved remote corner of the Mojave, its beauties, hardships and endangerments. The place has been an essential part of her creative process and project. “What we do for fun in Tecopa is like, watch the sky. That’s our entertainment, you know?” she says, reflecting on the long moments of silence that stretch out over the evenings. “And it’s like, ‘wow.’”

From Ryan Kartje: She’d been out for more than a year, her long, arduous recovery from a season-ending knee injury kept almost completely under wraps. But as JuJu Watkins took her place in front of a microphone for the first time since returning to practice this summer, the USC superstar barely could contain her gratitude.

Asked Monday what the best part about being back has been so far, a big smile crept across Watkins’ face.

“Honestly everything,” Watkins said. “Like I don’t even know, the smallest stuff just gets me excited.”

Watkins’ return is a momentous mile marker for a Trojans team that has serious national title aspirations this season. Her status remains uncertain, and reporters in attendance Monday were told not to inquire further about Watkins’ recovery timeline. But she did say she’s already been able to scrimmage during USC’s summer practice and that she’s “feeling back like myself.”

“It’s just been a long time coming,” Watkins said. “I’ve just been working out and grinding every day so that I could be in position, so to see all of that hard work pay off right now, it’s really fulfilling.”

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Monday’s World Cup results

Round of 32
Brazil 2, Japan 1
Paraguay 1, Germany 1 (Paraguay wins on PK’s, 4-3)
Morocco 1, Netherlands 1 (Morocco wins on PK’s, 3-2)

Today’s World Cup TV schedule

All times Pacific
10 a.m., Ivory Coast vs. Norway, Fox, Telemundo
2 p.m., France vs. Sweden, Fox, Telemundo
6 p.m., Mexico vs. Ecuador, Fox, Telemundo

World Cup round of 32 schedule, results

Canada 1, South Africa 0
Brazil 2, Japan 1
Paraguay 1, Germany 1 (Paraguay wins on PK’s, 4-3)
Morocco 1, Netherlands 1 (Morocco wins on PK’s, 3-2)

All times Pacific
Tuesday
Ivory Coast vs. Norway, 10 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
France vs. Sweden, 2 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Mexico vs. Ecuador, 6 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Wednesday
England vs. Congo DR, 9 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Belgium vs. Senegal, 1 p.m., FS1, Telemundo
U.S. vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 5 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Thursday
Spain vs. Austria, noon, Fox, Telemundo
Portugal vs. Croatia, 4 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Switzerland vs. Algeria, 8 p.m., FS1, Telemundo

Friday
Australia vs. Egypt, 11 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Argentina vs. Cape Verde, 3 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Colombia vs. Ghana, 6:30 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Round of 16 schedule

Saturday
Canada vs. Morocco, 10 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Paraguay vs. France or Sweden, 2 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Sunday
Brazil vs. Norway or Ivory Coast, 1 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Dodgers defeat the Athletics

From Bill Shaikin: Teoscar Hernández was back from a hamstring injury, and a little bit humble. He was about to play his first game in a month for the Dodgers.

“I don’t think they really need me in the lineup,” he said, with a hint of a smile.

Hernández hit 58 home runs over his first two seasons with the Dodgers, each of which ended in a World Series championship, so of course they need him. But, in his absence, the Dodgers had more than doubled their National League West lead.

Hernández is back, but Will Smith and Kiké Hernández still are out. So are Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Edwin Díaz.

No matter: The Dodgers boosted their division lead to 11 games Monday with a 9-4 victory over the Athletics. Shohei Ohtani, Max Muncy and Andy Pages homered to highlight a 17-hit attack.

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Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Angels lose to Mariners

Cole Young hit two home runs to back eight strong innings from George Kirby as the Seattle Mariners came from behind to beat the Angels 6-2 on Monday night.

Dominic Canzone also went deep to help Seattle (43-43) get back to .500 and stay a half-game behind the first-place Texas Rangers in the American League West.

Zach Neto doubled to center field leading off the game against Kirby (7-7), and Denzer Guzman singled two pitches later for a 1-0 lead. Neto hit his 18th home run in the third — a two-out shot that made it 2-0.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

Who is coming back to the Lakers?

From Broderick Turner: As LeBron James dominated the news cycle regarding his future on the eve of NBA free agency, another member of the Lakers’ starting lineup returned.

Deandre Ayton is picking up his contract option for $8.1 million, according to people not authorized to publicly discuss the decision.

The 7-foot Ayton averaged career lows in points (12.5), rebounds (8.2) and minutes per game (27.2) in his first season with the Lakers, but played a career-high 72 games and shot a career-best 67.1% from the field. He averaged 10 points and 9.6 rebounds in the playoffs.

Lakers guard Marcus Smart declined his option of $5.9 million and will become an unrestricted free agent, according to people not authorized to publicly discuss the decision.

Smart is expected to have several teams pursue him in free agency, with the Houston Rockets reportedly among them.

He was the Lakers’ best defender and averaged 9.3 points and 3.0 assists last season, also his first with the team.

As for James, he’s an unrestricted free agent who earned $52.6 million last season. Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka said during his season-ending news conference in May that they would give James time with his family to decide his future.

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Former Lakers Malik Beasley and Ed Davis accused of illegal gambling, wire fraud and money laundering

This day in sports history

1909 — Jack Johnson fights Tony Ross to a no decision in 6 rounds at Duquesne Gardens, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to retain his heavyweight boxing title.

1916 — Amateur Chick Evans Jr. wins the U.S. Open with a record 286 total.

1929 — Bobby Jones beats Al Espinosa by 23 strokes in a 36-hole playoff to win the U.S. Open.

1962 — Murle Lindstrom wins the U.S. Women’s Open by two strokes over Jo Anne Prentice and Ruth Jessen.

1965 — The NFL grants Atlanta a franchise. Rankin Smith Sr., an Executive Vice President of Life Insurance Company of Georgia, pays $8.5 million for the franchise. It’s the highest price paid in league history at the time.

1975 — Muhammad Ali retains world heavyweight boxing crown by beating Englishman Joe Bugner by unanimous points decision in a re-match in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

1991 — Wimbledon breaks 114 years of tradition by playing on the middle Sunday of the tournament, a move forced by a huge backlog of matches caused by rain earlier in the week.

1991 — Meg Mallon sinks a 10-foot birdie putt on the final hole to break a tie with Pat Bradley and Ayako Okamoto and win the LPGA Championship.

1993 — NBA Draft: Michigan center Chris Webber first pick by Orlando Magic (traded to Golden State).

1994 — Diego Maradona is kicked out of the World Cup by FIFA for failing a drug test after Argentina’s June 25 victory over Nigeria in Foxboro, Mass.

1994 — Tonya Harding is stripped of her national title and banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. because of her role in an attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

1996 — UEFA European Championship Final, Wembley Stadium, London, England: Oliver Bierhoff scores his second goal in extra time as Germany beat Czech Republic, 2-1.

1999 — NBA Draft: Duke power forward Elton Brand first pick by Chicago Bulls.

2002 — Ronaldo scores both goals to lead Brazil to a 2-0 victory over Germany for the team’s record fifth World Cup title.

2012 — Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan becomes the first player in a Grand Slam tournament to win every point of a set on her way to beating French Open runner-up Sara Errani 6-0, 6-4 in the third round of Wimbledon.

2013 — Inbee Park wins the U.S. Women’s Open for her third straight major this year. Babe Zaharias is the last player to win three straight majors on the calendar, but that was in 1950 when that’s all there were.

2013 — NHL Draft: Halifax Mooseheads (QMJHL) center Nathan MacKinnon #1 pick by Colorado Avalanche.

2015 — The United States defeat Germany 2-0 in semifinals at Women’s World Cup. Carli Lloyd converts a penalty kick for Team USA and a 1-0 lead. Substitute Kelley O’Hara scores in the 84th minute off a Lloyd cross to seal the U.S. team’s 2-0 victory.

2018 — FIFA World Cup: Kylian Mbappé (19) becomes only 2nd teenager (Pelé 1st 1958) to score twice in a World Cup match as France eliminate Argentina 4-3 in Kazan.

2020 — FC Barcelona’ Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi scores his 700th career goal in a 2-2 draw with Atletico Madrid.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1908 — Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox pitched the third no-hitter of his career at age 41, an 8-0 win over the New York Highlanders.

1948 — Cleveland’s Bob Lemon pitched a 2-0 no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers for the first American League no-hitter at night.

1962 — Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers struck out 13 New York Mets en route to the first of four career no-hitters, a 5-0 victory at Dodger Stadium.

1970 — Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati was dedicated, but Henry Aaron spoiled the show for the crowd of 51,050 with a first-inning homer off Jim McGlothlin to send Atlanta past the Reds 8-2.

1978 — Willie McCovey became the 12th player in major league history to hit 500 home runs. His shot off Atlanta’s Jamie Easterly wasn’t enough, with the Braves beating the visiting San Francisco Giants 10-5 in the second game of a doubleheader.

1986 — 1985 Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson makes his pro baseball debut with the Memphis Chicks of the double-A Southern League and goes 1 for 4 with two strikeouts.

1995 — Eddie Murray of the Cleveland Indians became the second switch-hitter and the 20th player in baseball history to reach 3,000 hits when he singled against the Minnesota Twins. Murray joined Pete Rose, the career hits leader with 4,256, as the only switch-hitters to get 3,000.

1997 — Bobby Witt of Texas hit the first home run by an American League pitcher in a regular-season game in almost 25 years, connecting off Ismael Valdes in the Rangers’ 3-2 interleague victory over the Dodgers.

1998 — Sammy Sosa hit his 20th home run in June, extending his major league record for most homers in a month with an eighth-inning shot for the Cubs against Arizona.

2005 — Chad Cordero earned his 15th save in June in the Washington Nationals’ 7-5 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. He tied a major league record set by Lee Smith in 1993 and matched by John Wetteland in 1996.

2006 — Adam Dunn hit a grand slam with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning off closer Bob Wickman to lead Cincinnati to a 9-8 victory over Cleveland.

2008 — Nick Swisher homered from both sides of the plate, hitting his second grand slam in four games and adding a solo shot to lead the Chicago White Sox past Cleveland, 9-7.

2009 — Nick Markakis hit a two-run double off Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon to complete the biggest comeback in Baltimore Orioles history for an 11-10 win. Baltimore trailed 10-1 before scoring five runs in the seventh inning and five more in the eighth.

2016 — Coastal Carolina capitalized on two errors on the same play for four unearned runs in the sixth inning, and the Chanticleers won their first national championship in any sport with a 4-3 victory over Arizona in Game 3 of the College World Series finals. The Chanticleers became the first school since Minnesota in 1956 to win the title in its first CWS appearance.

2020 — Minor League Baseball officially announces the cancellation of its season as Major League Baseball will keep a “taxi squad” of eligible players that can be added to the roster if needed.

2021 — Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner ties the major league record by hitting for the cycle for the third time in his career in a 15-6 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

She’d been out for over a year, her long, arduous recovery from a season-ending knee injury kept almost completely under wraps. But as JuJu Watkins took her place in front of a microphone for the first time since returning to practice this summer, the USC superstar could barely contain her gratitude.

Asked Monday what the best part about being back has been so far, a big smile crept across Watkins’ face.

“Honestly everything,” Watkins said. “Like I don’t even know, the smallest stuff just gets me excited.”

Watkins’ return is a momentous mile marker for a team that has serious national title aspirations this season. Her status remains uncertain, and reporters in attendance Monday were told not to inquire further about Watkins’ specific recovery timeline. But Watkins did say that she’s already been able to scrimmage during USC’s summer practice and that she’s “feeling back like myself.”

“It’s just been a long time coming,” Watkins said. “I’ve just been working out and grinding every day so that I could be in position, so to see all of that hard work pay off right now, it’s really fulfilling.”

Watkins was a two-time consensus All-American and the Associated Press Player of the Year in 2025, when her knee buckled that March during a breakaway in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The injury, a torn ACL, wouldn’t just derail a possible title run for USC that season, but also upend the Trojans’ trajectory for the next one.

Facing one of the toughest schedules in the nation, USC missed Watkins dearly. The Trojans finished their frustrating campaign 18-14 before losing in the Round of 32.

As she sat out, Watkins said she struggled to keep still. Patience didn’t necessarily come naturally. She found herself leaning on others, she said, like Dallas Wings point guard Paige Bueckers, who went through her own ACL recovery.

“She was constantly checking up on me, sending me texts, encouraging me,” Watkins said of Bueckers. ‘I really appreciated that.”

Coaches suggested she pour that energy into her teammates. So she took solace in doing the little things, like arranging the locker room chairs during pre-game.

“Just to watch her take something that was so difficult and pour herself into everything that went into last year was something I’ll never forget,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “I really do take a lot of inspiration from it.”

The silver lining, coming out of a season without their superstar, was the emergence of freshman Jazzy Davidson, who came to USC to play alongside Watkins. Instead, she ended up winning National Freshman of the Year and becoming a rising star in her own right,

This month, Watkins and Davidson were finally able to take the floor together, just as Gottlieb had once envisioned. She’d waited quite a while for that pairing, she reminded Monday. But Davidson, she thinks, will be all the better for having survived her freshman season without Watkins.

“You just come back with a different level of confidence,” Gottlieb said. “I hope she brings with her every experience she had because who had more experience than Jazzy in terms of a freshman year where she handled so much?”

Now, with Watkins back and Davidson set to take another step forward, there won’t be so much pressure on the Trojans’ newest top recruit.

Saniyah Hall marks the third straight No. 1 overall prospect to sign with Gottlieb and USC, but she steps into a decidedly different scenario than the other two did. In addition to Watkins and Davidson, the Trojans also brought in two other top freshmen in Sitaya Fagan and Sara Okeke, as well as two priority portal adds in Ryann Bennett and Pania Davis.

“With the talent that’s on the team,” Hall said, “I think it could be something that’s very special.”

That starts with Watkins, who, in spite of a year away, apparently hasn’t skipped a beat in her return.

“I feel like she’s back like she never left,” guard Kennedy Smith said.

Since the last international break, no player has scored more Premier League goals than Watkins’ nine.

Manchester City‘s Erling Haaland is second on that list with seven, while Nottingham Forest‘s Morgan Gibbs-White is the next best English player on five.

But, while Watkins may well be arguably England’s most in-form striker heading into the World Cup, realistically the spot everyone is vying for is the number one back-up position to captain Kane.

Ivan Toney has been in prolific form all season for Al-Ahli but playing in the Saudi Pro League means his numbers are difficult to directly compare with the other contenders.

Of the rest, Watkins’ 19 goals in all competitions puts him five ahead of both Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who returned to the England fold after a five-year exile in March, and Danny Welbeck, whose last cap was in 2018.

“He’s got to be on the plane,” former Villa midfielder Lee Hendrie said on Sky Sports when asked about Watkins’ chances of being included this summer. “Since being left out we’ve just seen a massive turning of the corner.

“He’s been relentless in front of goal, he’s shown his capabilities. He’s a totally different player to Harry Kane and gives them something different.”