Harry Kane admits England ‘got away with it’ against Andorra
Kane’s goal was all Thomas Tuchel’s side had to show for their outing against FIFA’s 173rd-ranked team
England captain Harry Kane admits Thomas Tuchel’s side “got away with it” having put in a sloppy display in Saturday’s drab encounter with minnows Andorra.
After starting World Cup qualification, and the German’s reign, with Wembley wins against Albania and Latvia, things fell flat against the 173rd-best team in the world in Barcelona.
England were booed by many of the 6,950 travelling fans after a scoreless first half against Andorra, with further jeers greeting the final whistle after Tuchel’s men failed to kick on from Kane’s 50th-minute goal.
The candid head coach felt the Euro 2024 runners-up “played with fire” due to their lack of “seriousness and urgency”, with the skipper sharing similar sentiments.
“It wasn’t our greatest performance,” Kane said. “I don’t think it’s one many people are going to remember, that’s for sure, but it’s three points in the bag.
“But, yeah, for sure we know we can play better in all aspects, both with and without the ball.
“It’s down to us now to go analyse it, look back and try and learn from it because condition-wise it’s going to be very similar to next summer – dry pitch, warm weather, humid.
“We were just lacking quality, looked a bit fatigued both physically and mentally and, yeah, we got away with it because we’re a good team and they had a couple of half-chances there where we didn’t get punished. But ultimately, it wasn’t good enough.”
Kane has scored in all three matches under Tuchel, his former manager at Bayern Munich, with the latest effort extending England’s all-time top scorer’s record goal haul to 72.
Noni Madueke capped a man-of-the-match display by providing the cross for the winner and the captain felt this kind of match cried out for the directness of a talent like the Chelsea winger.
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“He was really good today,” Kane said as attention turns to Tuesday’s friendly against Senegal. “I think in these type of games, you need players like Noni who are good one-v-one to sometimes make a difference.
“It’s a dry pitch, not easy to move the ball quickly, so sometimes you rely on individual quality and I thought he was probably our best outlet today.
“The goal itself was probably our best move of the game in terms of how we wanted to play, more in terms of Curt (Jones) getting on it and playing the forward pass to me, and then obviously the rebound and back across.
“It was probably our best move and we just didn’t have enough of that, both with probably the runs and also the quality – a lot of balls kind of overhit, out of play, and it just kind of killed our momentum, especially there in the second half.”
PA
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