Sunday People

HARRY SAYS RELAX Goal hero Kane is chillin’

- By Tom Hopkinson

appearance­s for his country. That tally means he’s now level with past stars including Ian Wright and Paul Gascoigne on England’s all-time list of goalscorer­s.

He added: “In internatio­nal football it’s tough to score so I’m happy to get to the 10 mark and hopefully I’ll get to 15 as soon as possible.” HARRY KANE urged England fans to keep calm and let the team carry on to Russia after the Three Lions were booed during their 4-0 win in Malta on Friday.

Gareth Southgate’s side laboured to their World Cup qualifying victory over the 190th-ranked team in world football.

There were even chants of ‘We’re f****** s***’ during a dreadful first half in which they failed to break the deadlock.

Kane eventually got the first goal after 53 minutes to relieve the pressure and three more followed at the death from Ryan Bertrand, Danny Welbeck and Kane again.

But the late flourish could not mask another bitterly disappoint­ing performanc­e from England, who should have had the game wrapped up well before the interval.

Kane said: “From our point of view, as a country, we just need to stay patient, stay relaxed and see what happens.

“Obviously people can be frustrated, we were frustrated in that first half.

“Of course we always want to blow teams away in the first half. But it doesn’t always happen like that, especially games like this where people always underestim­ate the opposition, particular­ly away from home. They just have to stay patient as we did in the game – we scored four very good goals in the end.

“When people looked at this on Saturday morning and saw a 4-0 result they’d say that’s what people would have expected.

“We’re by no means the finished article, there’s still a lot for us to work on.

“So we’ve got to stay patient as a country together, it’s not going to happen overnight.

“There are a lot of very good teams — France winning 4-0 on Thursday showed that — so there are still a lot of preparatio­ns from now until the World Cup and it’s a big game on Monday night where we can put a big marker down.”

Kane and Co face much tougher opponents than Malta at Wembley tomorrow with Slovakia, second in Group F, the visitors.

And the Tottenham striker, whose club side have struggled at the national stadium, realises that long- suffering Three Lions fans might be struggling to connect with the team after so many recent disappoint­ments.

He added: “It’s understand­able. We’ve done well at this stage before but it’s all about the tournament. That’s nothing we can control for now, all we can try to do is qualify, try to learn and get better. “Then what happens in a tournament happens.

“But for now we just need to stay patient. We know what we need to do, the manager knows what he wants, so we have just got to try to do it.

“Coming to places like Malta, they’re always going to put plenty of men behind the ball and make it difficult.

“But the game plan all along was to be patient and composed, and in certain areas we knew they’d tire and that’s what happened, and it was a good 4-0 result.”

Kane and his Spurs team-mates in England’s squad have lost and drawn in their two games at Wembley this season to carry on last season’s miserable record.

He said: “We seem to do all right there for England so for me and for the Spurs boys it would be good to win and take that confidence into the Premier League.”

 ??  ?? MALTA KANED Harry Kane scores his second and England’s fourth goal against Malta but fans were largely unimpresse­d
MALTA KANED Harry Kane scores his second and England’s fourth goal against Malta but fans were largely unimpresse­d

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