he was the best defender he had played against and the only one to tackle him without resorting to fouling. Throughout the whole of his career King received only eight yellow cards, unusual even for a relatively short career. Testimonial On 12 May 2014, Ledley made a final playing appearance at White Hart Lane in his testimonial match. King with a Guests XI featuring David Ginola, Teddy Sheringham and Dimitar Berbatov faced a Tottenham Hotspur team made up of first and reserve team players. The game finished 6–3 to the Ledley XI, with King opening the scoring from the penalty spot, and Louis Saha netting a second half hat trick for the XI. International career King's England debut came in a 1–2 loss to Italy in March 2002. He was called into the England squad for the friendly against Portugal on 18 February 2004, and netted his first goal on his third appearance. King received his England call-up for Euro 2004 deputising for the injured John Terry in the opener against France in Portugal. He also made a substitute appearance in midfield in the final group game against Croatia. After featuring regularly in the qualifiers, King looked a likely participant in the England 2006 World Cup squad before fracturing a bone in his foot on 15 April 2006. Although not as bad as a similar injury affecting David Beckham, Gary Neville and Steven Gerrard, King's injury prevented him from being named in Sven-Göran Eriksson's squad. "Ledley King is injured and he can't train. If you talk about centre-halves we are very well covered, so taking another one half-injured when we have so many good ones it is not a good idea." King played in the Euro 2008 qualifier against Estonia on 6 June 2007. King played 90 minutes and England won 3–0. Although he featured in Fabio Capello's first squad, he had to pull out through injury. Due to the chronic knee condition which preventing him holding down a regular place in the club side he was also not selected for England games for the rest of 2007 and during the whole of 2008. On 22 March 2009, King was given a recall by head coach Fabio Capello to the team to play Slovakia and Ukraine. However, two days later he was removed from the squad after being assessed by England's medical staff, who thought it was in his best