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Harry Kane took the ball in his hands and walked up to the penalty spot in the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. And suddenly, for a few seconds, our minds were taken back to a stadium in the desert a few miles north of Doha on Saturday December 10 last year.
Kane was standing over a penalty spot then, too, with six minutes to go of a World Cup quarter-final and England trailing France 2-1.
It was 103 days ago but the moment is etched on all our memories. Kane, who had already scored one penalty in the game, took his run-up and then smashed the ball high, high over the crossbar. And Kylian Mbappe laughed with relief. And every England fan in the ground was stunned into silence. The miss cost Kane the chance to break his country’s goalscoring record. And England went out of the World Cup.
Now, he was standing over the penalty spot again. There were two minutes to go until half time of England’s first match since that grim night in Qatar and Giovanni Di Lorenzo had handled the ball in the Italy area. And in another big game, England’s critical opening match of their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign against one of the traditional powerhouses of the game, Kane had a shot at a kind of redemption.
This time, just like almost every other time he takes a penalty, he made no mistake. He sent Gianluigi Donnarumma the wrong way and clipped his kick inside the left-hand post. This time, he had it. This time he had number 54, the goal that established him as England’s greatest goalscorer, the goal that took him above Wayne Rooney in that fabled list of goalscorers that includes Sir Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker and Jimmy Greaves.
The penalty put England 2-0 up after Declan Rice’s earlier strike and even though Mateo Retegui pulled one back for Italy early in the second half, Luke Shaw was sent off for a second bookable offence ten minutes from time and the home side were much the better team after the break, England had the guts and the doggedness to hang on and come away with the win.
Kane’s goal was the difference in a game that England nearly threw away in the second half. England were poor in the second half and it was closer than it should have been but it was still a hugely important win. At the Euro 2020 final, Italy pegged England back but this time, England clung on. If this qualifying competition and the finals which follow it are to form Gareth Southgate’s last dance as England boss, this victory and some of the qualities England showed during it made it the perfect start.
England’s first win in Italy since 1961 was significant not just because of Kane’s goal and the way England clung on for their win but also because of the performances of Jude Bellingham and Bukayo Saka. There were times in the first half when Bellingham, who is still only 19, bestrode the game and made everyone else on the pitch look ordinary. He and Saka and Rice and others are the cornerstones of a bright future.
Southgate’s selection of Kalvin Phillips to anchor midfield alongside Declan Rice in the starting line-up was a surprise that gave the England team an even more distinctive flavour of Euro 2020. Eight of the eleven that walked out into the bowl of this stadium had started the final of that tournament. Two
