‘Dragon Kane’ ate Ramos and Nacho for dinner

SPAIN’S most popular theme park Port Aventura World boasts a record-breaking roller coaster called ‘Dragon Khan’. Still feeling dizzy and nauseous from their 3-2 defeat, the Spanish dubbed England’s centre forward ‘Dragon Kane’ yesterday with Diario AS lamenting the way he ‘ate up Sergio Ramos, then Nacho, and then both of them at once’. There was also the inevitable speculation that he had done it all as an audition for a Real Madrid move. ‘The English forward will have thought, “If I’m going to play in La Liga one day I had better show what I can do”,’ wrote one columnist. Making fools of the Real Madrid central defensive pairing will certainly have left a lasting impression, not that there was any flirting as he bolted past Spanish reporters in the Benito Villamarin telling them ‘not today’ as they asked him to stop for them after the game. It wasn’t just the Madrid media wondering what Kane might do for their team. Barcelona-based Sport headlined its editorial ‘Citizen (Harry) Kane’ and gushed: ‘Kane dismantled in 45 minutes all the magic that was sustaining Luis Enrique’s new project.’ The praise went on: ‘He is a marvellous footballer. He is at the level of the greats despite not having the talent of Messi, the athleticism of Ronaldo or the skill of Neymar.’ It suggested he would be perfect for Barca were it not for his huge price tag. Marca enthused: ‘Kane gave a demonstration of how to serve your team without actually scoring.’ Diario AS made him man of the match, commenting: ‘A masterclass in losing your marker.’ AS’s tactical breakdown of the game pinpointed the fact that Ramos and Nacho both allowed Kane to turn and generate opportunities and Ramos was still in the line of fire when the lunchtime news bulletins held their inquests into the defeat. Of particular interest was a comment Ramos had made in the pre-match press conference when asked about Kane. ‘We have studied him well to make sure it’s not his night,’ he was shown on a loop saying over and over again. ‘A good job we had studied him then,’ said pundit and former Spain forward Kiko Narvaez sarcastically. Think how bad it might have been if not. Spain blamed their own complacency too. ‘They caught us whistling’ was Marca’s front-page headline. It referred both to what Marca called the ‘embarrassing whistling of the English anthem,’ and that Spain had been whistling complacently, leaning back on their laurels, feeling invincible, when as Marca columnist Jose Vicente Hernandez put it perfectly: ‘England brought them down off their cloud.’