Country ‘will still be behind Kane’ despite his pen miss
HARRY Kane has been backed to overcome any trauma after his World Cup penalty miss.
The skipper blasted his crucial second spot-kick over the bar with seven minutes left as the Three Lions were knocked out by France on Saturday.
Kane had already scored from the spot to make it 1-1 - drawing level with Wayne Rooney’s record of 53 England goals.
There was a lengthy VAR delay before his second penalty and it was taken against his Tottenham team-mate Hugo Lloris, but leading sports performance coach Jeremy Lazarus feels Kane will recover.
“He’ll have the nation behind him and I think that’s important. People recognise what a fantastic player he is, what a fantastic leader and a good man he is,” he said.
“It’s a big event, if there’s any residual ‘trauma’ or negativity he must find a way to deal with that, rather than keep it all in himself.
“It strikes me, just from what you see on TV, he’s a good, solid family man. He’s not going to go off the rails. He’s got a good support network around him. So, I think it’s up to him if there’s any residual, I’m going to call it trauma, with a small t.”
But Lazarus believes Kane was right to step up to take the spotkick and not pass on the responsibility.
He said: “In any situation whenever there’s a second penalty in a match it becomes even more cat and mouse. Even more of a game of poker.
“That puts even more pressure on the striker, the goalkeeper in that situation is under no pressure at all.
“It’s interesting with the French players surrounding the referee for a good three or four minutes, which I think is probably a very smart tactic. So, Kane had a five, six, seven-minute delay, it was quite a long delay.
“So, that was possibly a factor. Maybe he felt it was he who had to take it because he’s the captain so he couldn’t pass it to (Marcus) Rashford, for example.”