The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Colombia, England victorious with routs
Radamel Falcao and Colombia punished Poland, 3-0, to keep its hopes of advancing alive. Harry Kane and England decimated Panama, and Senegal and Japan played to a stalemate.
• Four years after Radamel Falcao was supposed to lead Colombia at the World Cup, he’s doing just that. Falcao missed the tournament in Brazil with a knee injury and had to wait until arriving in Russia to score his first World Cup goal. It came in Colombia’s 3-0 victory over Poland. “It’s a dream goal,” Falcao said. “I’m happy for the victory, for the team’s performance and the goal that I scored, which I’ve been waiting for for many years.” The victory kept Colombia in the running for a spot in the round of 16 and knocked out Poland, the first European country to be eliminated. Falcao, Colombia’s all-time leading scorer with 30 goals, made sure he would stay healthy for this year’s World Cup by sitting out several matches with his Monaco club this season. So far, so good. “We always hope that he can score and hope that he can be fit as he was today, and we want to help him,” Colombia coach Jose Pekerman said. “I think the fact that he scored was very important, not just for today but for the matches to come. “He is a symbol of the national team. He is a symbol of Colombian football.” • With two penalties and an accidental deflection, Harry Kane moved ahead of David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo and put England into the round of 16 at the World Cup. Kane scored half of England’s goals in a 6-1 rout of Panama, the national team’s largest-ever margin of victory at the World Cup. “The third one is probably one of the luckiest ones of my career,” said Kane, who took the game ball to the locker room. “Sometimes you go through spells where you are scoring and sometimes it doesn’t fall for you.
“Not many players get to score a hat trick in a World Cup.” Kane has scored a tournamentleading five goals at the World Cup in Russia, one more than Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku. He also has 18 for England’s national team, one more than Beckham. Not since the 4-2 victory over Germany in the 1966 final has England scored as many goals at the World Cup. • Keisuke Honda sat on the bench for 72 minutes, knowing a goal would make him the first Japanese player to score at three World Cups. Six minutes later, it was a done deal. The former AC Milan forward scored in the 78th minute, knocking the ball past two defenders standing on the goal line, to give Japan a 2-2 draw with Senegal at the World Cup. The 32-year-old Honda also scored at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. He has 37 international goals in his career. “I believe I used substitutions very well in looking back,” said Japan coach Akira Nishino, who took over shortly before the tournament started. “Honda was moved from center to the wide side and he was very versatile at adapting to that position.
“We really wanted to win, we wanted to equalize and also take the lead even though there was only a short period of time left.” The draw keeps both teams at the top of Group H ahead of their final matches. Japan will next face Poland in Volgograd on June 28 while Senegal faces Colombia in Samara.