Sunderland boss Steve Bruce is happy to give his World Cup players extra time off in preseason.

Bruce is planning to allow those players to come back to pre-season training later to allow them to fully recover from the physical and mental impact the world's biggest tournament has on its participants.

"It's important that once they finish the World Cup, those players have a bit of time off," Bruce, who also revealed he's a "big believer" in players getting some R&R over the summer break, told safc.com.

"We might not see some of them early in pre-season. Hopefully we'll have one, two or maybe even three players to keep an eye on."