Jaded Kane overused
Harry Kane will almost certainly win the Golden Boot, bar a miraculous performance from Kylian Mbappe or Antoine Griezmann but that doesn’t mean his performance in this tournament should be free from scrutiny. He started well against Tunisia and Panama but has faded through the knockout stages, not having a scoring since his penalty against Colombia or even mustering a shot on target against Sweden or Belgium. The fear of leaving him out against Belgium in the group stage was that he and the team would lose momentum, but if anything it looks as if he has played too many minutes, seemingly weary and heavylegged through much of the games against Sweden, Croatia
O Fall the names listed on the team sheet before the World Cup third-place playoff, the most surprising was Philip Anthony Jones. Jones had barely featured in the tournament up to this point, only appearing i n the final group game against Belgium which England had been happy to lose, and it seemed a strange moment to bring him into the fold.
But then it fits the pattern of Jones’s international career to date: a training cone, a dead-rubber specialist, 27 caps won in fits and starts.
After the then-England manager Fabio Capello said Jones was “born with talent”, Roy Hodgson called him i nto his Euro 2012 squad but t he defender didn’t play a minute in the tournament in Poland and Ukraine; Hodgson again called on him for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, but Jones played only in the goalless draw against Costa Rica once England were already eliminated.
This seems to be Jones in a nutshell: England’s reliable back-up, yet not quite so reliable as to be trusted when it actually matters.
It is odd to think that for all the clamour around the emergence of Harry Maguire, Phil Jones is only 11 months older. He still has his peak years ahead of him but it is hard to know exactly what they will consist of.
Once upon a time Sir Alex Ferguson tipped him to be a future captain for club and country, yet watching him against Belgium, that seemed a farfetched scenario.