There is one minute until half-time in the Euro 2024 final. Harry Kane shoots and Rodri slides in to block. At that moment, the two players’ finals change.
Kane’s shot from the edge of the box was struck purely with the instep, and from the reverse angle, looked directed for the bottom-right corner of the Spain goal.
Rodri, as ever, was there. From Kane’s blind spot, he went to ground and extended a left leg before the ball had travelled two metres. Chance gone. Goalless at half-time.
His effort exacted a toll. The Spanish midfielder limped down the tunnel, grimacing with his face in his hands. A hamstring injury would rule him out for the rest of the final. At full time, he would be named player of the tournament.
But this moment altered the trajectory of Kane’s match, too. This was the closest the England captain has come to scoring in a major tournament final — over two of them, this is the only touch he has had in the box.
It is not right to describe what sits on Kane’s shoulders as a weight, it is more of a force, nibbling away at the outline, we will remember. Trophies are not the only thing which defines legacies, but legacies demand crowning moments. Kane does not yet have one.
He may have another individual award — a six-way tie for the Golden Boot — but when bared open, this was a poor tournament that leaves questions hanging over Kane’s future international role.
Gareth Southgate explained it simply.
“He came in short of games and he’s not quite got up to the level we would have all hoped.”
(Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
At full time, Kane wandered onto the pitch slowly, hands on hips. Mikel Oyazarbal’s 86th-minute winner had given Spain a 2-1 win.
This was not his night, just as it had not been his night on so many other occasions. The 2015-16 Premier League run-in. The 2019 Champions League final. The 2021 Carabao Cup final. The 2021 Euros final. An unprecedented trophy-less season at Bayern Munich this season.
These matches tread a strange line where he is integral to the opportunity, yet culpable in his side’s failure to grasp it.
“It’s no secret that I haven’t won a team trophy and every year that goes by you’re more determined to change that,” Kane said on the eve of the match. “It’s no secret that I’d swap everything in my career to have that special evening. I’m determined to do it tomorrow night.”
Kane could not.
This was an isolated figure, shorn of the traits that have made him the country’s outstanding striker for a decade.
Kane has never been the quickest over the pitch but has made up for that by winning duels with outstanding positioning. Not tonight.
He has made a career from dropping deep to link play, before bursting into the box with perfect timing to finish chances. Not tonight, not in finding team-mates or in finding opportunities.
Kane has insisted throughout the tournament that he is fully fit, though he was managing a back injury towards the end of Bayern Munich’s season, but regardless of the source, without those traits, what is there left for a team to build around?
England’s captain was substituted for Ollie Watkins after an hour, and in truth, Southgate could have made the change earlier.
(Michael Regan – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
At almost 31 years old, this is a strange point in Kane’s career. He still has multiple seasons of goalscoring left — this is a player who scored 36 times for Bayern last season, demonstrating all the traits he possessed in north London.
But for the first time since Euro 2016, this was a major tournament in which there was an awareness that England had other options than Kane — the first competition, likely in his career, where he has been carried by his team rather than the other way around.
It necessarily leads to questions over whether he will be England’s starting striker for the 2026 World Cup. Watkins now plays for a Champions League club in Aston Villa and his energy fits better with England’s needs — or at least fits better than this desiccated Kane. Ivan Toney is expected to leave Brentford in the next season and his case could be boosted by a higher-profile club.
England may evolve as well — switching away from a traditional striker and towards a false nine, looking at the sides across this tournament, there are fewer and fewer of the first camp left. England have other attackers they can build around now — Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, and Cole Palmer.
Southgate’s future is another factor. He has a reputation for being loyal to players but before this tournament showed he was willing to move on. Kane, barring injury, will be in England’s squad in 2026, but his role is up for debate. A new manager, whoever that could be, would come with their own unpredictable tactical ideals.
(Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images)
“Gareth will go away and take time to decide,” Kane said post-match. “We wanted to win it for him.”
Kane has been a fixture of Southgate’s renaissance, the fulcrum of a squad which made a country care. People wanted to win it for him, too, a player who has given so much of himself, who contains very human limitations, an outstanding goalscorer who still searches for success. It sometimes feels cruel that this detail matters so much.
Tonight was another night where he walked past the trophy and out of the stadium. We do not know when, but eventually these nights will stop.
(Top photo: Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Read the full article here