Coach Stuart Lancaster's preference for him over Luther Burrell provided the main talking point after he trimmed his squad to 31 players on Thursday.
"Sam Burgess is an absolutely brilliant rugby league player and I think he will be a very good rugby union player, he's just not there yet, in my mind," former England captain and centre Will Carling told Sky Sports News.
"Southern hemisphere teams will have a look at him and think if you allow him to line you up he will hit you hard, but there are all sorts of tactics to sucker him in.
"It's a hell of a call to pick him and defensively, out in the space, I think people will attack him."
Carling's former England and British Lions team-mate Stuart Barnes, now a media commentator, agreed.
"I am 100 per cent with him when he says that Burgess will be picked off by the shrewder inside backs," he wrote in the Times.
Dean Ryan, coach of Worcester Warriors and another regular media pundit, said in the Guardian that England's coaches "seem to be about the only ones who reckon the league convert is ready for a union world cup".
But there was support for Burgess, 26, from the former British and Irish Lions coach Ian McGeechan.
"As soon as I watched Sam Burgess make his debut at Twickenham against France just under two weeks ago, I knew he had to be in the squad," he wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
"This was clearly a player whom everyone respected.
"When you are at arm's length and not seeing training every day, you simply cannot know the influence players are having there.
"It is of course incredibly tough on Luther Burrell that he missed out. It is not that Burrell is not good enough, it is just a preference in looking at the impact upon the whole group."
Lancaster, who has been criticised for his selection in the warm-up matches so far, has one more game against Ireland at Twickenham on Sept. 5, before the tournament begins.
England play in Pool A with Australia, Wales, Fiji and Uruguay, meeting the Fijians in the opening match on Sept. 18.
(Reporting by Steve Tongue)
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