WRIGHT WRONG ABOUT HARRY
My view on Kane’s style very different to Ian’s, says Gareth
In my view his football intelligence is very good
WHEN Harry Kane lines up against Poland tomorrow, Gareth Southgate expects him to prove two things.
Firstly, that having a hitman in your ranks is much better than having a missing man out of them.
And secondly, that theWright way to play centre-forward is not necessarily the right way.
If captain Kane remains fit, it can prove the wisdom of resting your star man for easier matches and answer a few remaining TV critics.
Even at half-time of last Thursday’s 5-0 romp against San Marino, Southgate joked that Kane kept hovering around him smiling, itching to be thrown onto the field. But when Poland coach Paulo Sousa was asked ahead of Sunday’s 3-0 win over Andorra if he was tempted to save Robert Lewandowski for England, he replied: “I always want to present the best because the goal is to win”.
Thankfully, Southgate is a firm believer in just how precious players like Kane and Lewandowski are.
“I think the two are similar,” he said. “There are not many outright No9s in the world at the moment at the really elite level.
“Romelu Lukaku is one. The two we are speaking about – Kane and Lewandowski – are. I suppose Sergio Aguero has been but you do not get that profile of forward so often.They are difficult to come by.
“When you’ve got one like we have, gives you a reference point, can lead the line, can link and as we said the other day, is not just top goalscorer in the Premier League but top for assists as well, it’s a fantastic player to have.”
And it is because he plays a different way that players like Kane are so valuable. The England manager contrasts that select group with more “interchangeable forward players” like Paris Saint-Germain and France striker Kylian Mbappe, who tend to be devastating down the middle and out wide.
Kane, who opened the scoring in Sunday’s 2-0 victory in Albania, also likes drifting deeper, if not wider. It was not a popular ploy with ITV’s
studio pundits, however. “Why is he coming this deep against Albania? I don’t know,” Ian Wright said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Southgate, though, backed Kane’s footballing nous against that of his former Crystal Palace team-mate.
“Somebody like Wrighty might have a different view of the role of a No9 and there’s lots of different ways of playing it,” he said.
“Wrighty was always much better on the last line running in behind people or flying into the box. However, Harry senses the moments to drop deep and create space for others and just to give defenders a different picture or problem to think about. His football intelligence is very good.
“If he is dropping deep we have to have runners in behind, which we did with Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden and James Ward-Prowse.
“I don’t think it’s a problem to mix the game up and give the opposition different things to deal with.” Lewandowski, of course, will now only be able to watch on with the rest of us tomorrow.