sport news MARTIN SAMUEL: Gareth Southgate's team have an identity and philosophy no ... trends now
There was a scare this week, around Harry Kane. A strange kind of scare, really, because it wasn’t scary.
Kane, England’s captain and talisman, suffered an injury to his ankle. He went for scans, he was in a lot of pain, there was a very real danger he could be out of today’s match with the United States, and perhaps even longer. And it wasn’t considered a calamity.
It mattered, of course it mattered. Kane is England’s best goalscorer and their leader. He didn’t score against Iran on Monday, but his influence was everywhere. He made two goals — the first England player at a World Cup to do so since David Beckham in 2006 —and his movement created space for others. Kane remains a hugely influential and important player.
Harry Kane underwent scans on his ankle ahead of England's clash with the USA on Friday
Kane (R) has been cleared to play but there was a lack of calamity over his potential absence
It’s just that, without him, we’ll live. No Kane, no crisis any more. It never used to be like that. Sven Goran Eriksson often spoke as if, without Wayne Rooney, England might as well board the bus for the airport. After the 2010 tournament, Fabio Capello felt his plans could be ruined by a Joe Hart injury.
‘I think it comes down to identity,’ wrote Harry Redknapp in his 2013 autobiography. ‘We don’t have any. We’ve bumbled along, a hundred different systems, are we kicking it, are we passing it?’
And then in walked Gareth Southgate. If there is a reason the thought of being without Kane in Al Khor this evening did not fill the country with trepidation, it is because the manager has instilled a philosophy, a way of playing that endures.
Marcus Rashford, perhaps Callum Wilson, would fill in for Kane and the rest of the team would stay the same.
Not that England are one-dimensional. A back four becomes a back five, 4-3-3 becomes 3-4-3, there are tweaks and nuances. Yet the confusion Redknapp spoke about, those teams who knocked it aimlessly around at the back one moment, launched it towards a combative frontman the next, those days have gone.
Gareth Southgate has managed to instill his own philosophy on the Three Lions squad
Southgate’s England could ride the challenge of a game without Kane. He has built a group who are, for once, more than the sum of their parts.
Southgate sat at England’s training camp at Al Wakrah, a municipality south of Doha, yesterday. Before the game with Iran he was wearing trainers emblazoned with the message ‘anything is possible’ but these had been changed.
Perhaps he felt less need for motivational mantras once England won their first game 6-2. Anyway, the trainers were unadorned, as was Southgate’s appraisal of his team. He is honest about where England are now, and where they were even 18 months ago, en route to the European Championship finals.
‘I see more of our attacking players in a better moment than they were in the Euros,’ he said. ‘I know people talked a lot about the depth we had then, but I didn’t see that for some of the squad. They were not in those really good moments when you were looking to make changes. There were some who were there, but not all.
‘Now, I’m looking at training and it’s at a really good level among the group and they’re making my decisions harder. If there’s
