Southgate backs Tottenham striker to set record goal tally for country that will never be beaten
Gareth Southgate has claimed that Harry Kane can set a scoring record for England that will never be beaten.
The England manager also joked that Wayne Rooney’s family “would have been on the phone telling us to get him (Kane) off” if the captain had stayed on longer than the hour it took him to score four goals in the 10-0 rout of San Marino, which secured qualification for next year’s World Cup.
The goals drew Kane level with Gary Lineker on 48 for his country and just five behind Rooney’s alltime total of 53.
Given Kane is just 28, he has several years, and potentially many caps to add to his 67 so far, and could go way beyond Rooney’s total.
“That will definitely be one of his goals, and the remarkable thing is we have not given him opportunities on nights like tonight very often. Certainly in the other three games similar to this in this group, we have not given him the minutes,” Southgate said, with Kane not having featured in the previous group game against San Marino.
He played for only half an hour in the pair of matches against the other Group I minnows, Andorra.
Southgate said: “He has got huge personal ambition and showed again his clinical nature and the mentality he’s got. It’s almost not, ‘Is he going to break the record?’, it is when and then what will he do beyond that point?”
When Southgate finally substituted Kane, he told him he could have beaten Rooney’s record in one evening if he had stayed on.
“I said to him we would have had Wayne Rooney’s family on the phone telling us to get him off,” he said. “He is a phenomenal goalscorer. We wanted to give him that chance tonight, and he took that really well.”
On England scoring 10 goals, Southgate said: “I just like the fact that we have got a mentality where we did not take our foot off the gas and whatever the challenge we set the players, they respond to it. It breeds a hunger and it breeds a desire, and you could see they were all queuing up to score a goal at the end rather than just keep the ball.”
Kane called on England to take that winning mentality into the World Cup, and the Tottenham for
ward believes the team can keep improving after reaching the European Championship final.
“We still need to keep working,”
Kane said. “We have been improving year on year at the World Cup and Euros, so we need to make the most of the time. There is not a lot of time before the next one – just using every training session and match, we can to fine-tune the little pieces.
“Hopefully, the mentality is building over the years and we can take that into the World Cup.”
After England qualified for the tournament for the seventh time in a row, a record, the captain said: “It’s fantastic. We came into the last game expected to win and as you’ve seen in the other groups, it’s not easy to qualify.
“When we win, people write off the opposition, but it’s a tough battle and to go through is a great feeling.”
Southgate also felt it was right to look ahead. “This is a good opportunity for us now to look at younger players, where we might take them and the experiences they might need over the next six or seven months.”
Meanwhile, Southgate said he had been part of a Football Association delegation to fact-find about Qatar because of concerns about human rights abuses in the Gulf state. “We have to be certain who we are speaking to and what issues are important because it feels like there are a lot,” he said.
“But I feel if there are areas where we can highlight and help, we have always done that and will continue to do that.”