World Cup: England’s winning start

It was shaping up to be a typical World Cup opener for England, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. “Soft penalty. Tick. Raheem Sterling missed sitter. Tick.” An underwhelming scoreline; clear room for improvement; frustrated fans watching at home. “Tick, tick and bloody tick.” And then, in the 91st minute of the Tunisia match in Volgograd on Monday, Harry Kane scored his second goal of the game, giving England a 2-1 victory. It was a deserved win – England’s first in their opening match of a tournament since the 2006 World Cup. “Had the scoreline reflected England’s supremacy, Gareth Southgate’s side would have laid down the most emphatic marker of any nation at this World Cup so far.”

It was all “a far cry” from England’s last appearance at a tournament, the “ordeal” against Iceland at Euro 2016, said Daniel Taylor in The Guardian. This time, they were quick to the ball and “slick with their passing”. England’s youngest World Cup team since 1962, with nine players making their debut in the competition, they attacked with “so much adventure” that they often “outnumbered their opponents at the back”. It was Kane who “defined this game”, said Henry Winter in The Times. He was dire at Euro 2016, where Roy Hodgson wasted him by making him take corners. But as captain – the youngest at the World Cup – this class act is now “leading the way”. If only the rest of the side were as lethal as Kane, said Phil Mcnulty on BBC Sport online. Time and again, England “carved open” Tunisia, only to be let down by “rank bad finishing” – particularly by Jesse Lingard and Sterling. There are “lingering questions”, too, over the defence, who will face a far tougher test against Belgium next week.

This match was not a triumph for the World Cup’s new video assistant referee (VAR) technology, said Dominic Fifield in The Guardian. For the first time at a major tournament, the official known as the VAR consults video footage whenever there has been a goal, penalty or red card, alerting the referee if a mistake has been made. Yet the VAR sided with the referee over the questionable decision to award Tunisia a penalty for Kyle Walker’s challenge, then failed to intervene when Yassine Meriah wrestled Kane to the ground. For the most part, though, VAR is “working”, said Sean Ingle in the same paper. It ensured a penalty was correctly awarded in France’s 2-1 win over Australia, even though the referee missed the challenge. With fouls “scrutinised far more closely than before”, there has been “a glut of spot kicks” at the tournament: a staggering eight in the first 14 games. As the technology becomes more widely used, that may just be “the new norm”.