Hero Kane salutes all-round Three Lions effort

Harry Kane praised his teammates for the professional manner in which they dealt with Panama as they cruised to a 6-1 victory to qualify for the World Cup’s last 16.

Kane scored a hat-trick, including two penalties, as England joined Belgium on six points from two games to ensure both countries advanced from Group G.

“I’m so, so proud of the boys, we’re just enjoying it, just enjoying being here,” Kane said. “We knew it was going to be tough and they started pretty well but we’ve beenworkingonourset-pieces, we’ve been working on the way we want to play and it’s all coming together.

“It’s a brilliant result, fantastic to be through and to do it in this way is brilliant.”

Kane is happy for supporters to dream of success on the world stage, but he knows there is a long way to go if he is to lift the trophy on July 15. “You have to believe, to achieve anything you want in life you have to believe,” Kane said. “There’s still a long way to go and a lot of hard work to go. but we’ve just got to stick together and keep to our game plan.” Panama coach Hernan Dario Gomez feared one of the biggest defeats in World Cup history when his side trailed 5-0 at the break.

He said: “To concede five goals in the first half, two penalties, two set-pieces, where England were very, very effective, well, what we did was try to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

“We managed to keep the ball in the second half a little bit more and we kept playing in an orderly fashion because had we not done that it wouldn’t have been six goals but far more.

“We were feeling rather frightened at half-time because of the huge difference between us and England.

“There was three or four goalscoring opportunities where we could have scored, but we didn’t finish properly, and England came to our box seven times and scored six.

“I’ve had to play against two spectacular opponents, Belgium and England. I think England are totally spectacular – a beautiful team.”