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There has been plenty of criticism of Harry Kane’s performances at Euro 2024.
There is even talk of Gareth Southgate leaving England’s all-time leading scorer out for the final group game against Slovenia on Tuesday. I disagree with that view: don’t leave him out. You cannot leave your captain and your main goalscorer out of the team.
Things have not been clicking across the pitch, which has not helped. So many players are not playing for their country in the same manner that they are playing for their club, so it is normal to get this kind of criticism.
As Harry said yesterday, all of us former England players know what it is like to be in the spotlight at major tournaments. I had it in my career where I’ve been criticised for not scoring or not playing well enough. I would have said exactly the same as Harry when I was in his position as captain. You know you haven’t been playing well — but you always get the final say.
We have been here before with Harry in a major tournament, too. After England’s 0-0 stalemate with Scotland on their second matchday of Euro 2020, his performance was similarly under the spotlight. In the end, he scored four times in the knockout rounds and England reached the final.
There are clearly issues that need to be resolved at the team level, so it would be unfair to single out any individual. However, writing as a former England striker, I do think it is worth looking at Harry’s contribution across the opening two games at Euro 2024 — on and off the ball.
Let’s start with the main narrative of the game: that Harry was coming far too deep when England had the ball.
Harry is brilliant at coming deep — he loves doing it — but he did it too much against Denmark. The issue is that he is coming into traffic and getting in the way of his own players when he does come into midfield areas. As you can see in the graphic below, he likes to drop into those wide areas to link up with a midfielder or full-back, but it is often at the expense of a central presence between the width of the six-yard box.
That being said, his team-mates are rarely running beyond him, so it is a combination of two issues that are linked.
I know from experience that dropping into deeper areas can be problematic at times. When Sir Bobby Robson arrived at Newcastle, he told me I was making it too easy for the defenders by playing in front of them. Defenders hate running towards their own goal and I was coming towards the ball every time.
Sir Bobby told me to mix it up, even if it is every four or five runs, and look to spin in behind – come short to go long. That will put doubt in the defenders’ minds, so they will drop five yards or 10 yards, meaning your own defenders and midfielders can push up and you are then closer to goal. Harry did not do that enough against Denmark.
It was clear from the first minute of the game in Frankfurt.
As Denmark are on the attack, Rasmus Hojlund turns back and loses possession. The ball falls to Harry, but I don’t think there’s a need for him to be coming back there. You have four Danish players in shot, with every England player dropping in to contain them.
When they do win the ball, there is nowhere to go. No one is stretching Denmark’s defence and when Harry does play it over to Bukayo Saka, he has to run 60 yards on his own without any support.
Looking at this next clip — still within the first 10 minutes — it is worth noting how high Denmark’s defensive line is. As Kieran Trippier receives it at left-back, Harry could spin in behind (shown by the black dashed arrow), but watch his movement.
If he stays away, Trippier has got 20 yards of grass in front of him to run into. But because Harry comes short, he stops Trippier’s run and kills the attack. He actually turns away from goal and passes back to Trent Alexander-Arnold. So England have gone 30 yards further back because Harry has come short, while your left-back is the most advanced player forward.
This next one is more subtle because Harry doesn’t receive the ball, but when Declan Rice drives forward, you can see Harry on the defensive line. That is still a high line, with 40 yards of space to run into against three centre-backs who are not the quickest.
There are gaps there to run into (black dashed arrows), but Harry has actually shimmied towards the centre circle — away from the centre-backs who now have the game in front of them. Rice passes it onto Jude Bellingham, but it is another example of Harry coming short and a promising attack coming to nothing.
I could show you more, but I’ll save you the time. Trust me, it happened a lot.
I’m not saying he can’t ever come short, but when he does do it, you either need to then spin in behind or have someone run beyond him. That rarely happened, but there were two occasions of note.
The first was after 25 minutes, where Harry came short towards Rice while Bellingham drove in behind. The ball was just overhit, but I didn’t mind the approach to test the Denmark defence.
In this next sequence, the ball ends up going back to Jordan Pickford — which tells you everything you need to know.
John Stones is striding out of defence with the ball and looks up. Harry is on the last line and drags Andreas Christensen out of position really well by moving three yards towards the ball.
This opens up two options. If Harry takes another yard, then he could spin in behind and expose the space he has opened up, or Saka could drive into that gap (dashed black arrows) for Stones to play the ball over the top (yellow arrow).
Neither ends up happening. Stones plays a simple ball to Kyle Walker, who goes back further. You have gone from a really promising position to going back to your goalkeeper four seconds later.
Across the first two games, there was only one occasion I could remember of him spinning in behind and that was against Serbia. He performed well in that game, largely from his off-ball work for his team when in possession. Yes, it’s not ideal as a forward when you are only having two touches in the first half, but he was still occupying defenders, which is beneficial to his team-mates.
As you can see below across both games, stretching that last line allowed Bellingham, Foden, or even Alexander-Arnold to pick up those pockets of space between the opposition lines and allow England to squeeze the pitch themselves.
If he is going to drop deep, we know he needs runners ahead of him. How many times did we see him picking passes for Son Heung-min bursting beyond him in a Tottenham Hotspur shirt? The same has been true at Bayern Munich this season, with the best example being Alphonso Davies’ goal against Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final.
Davies’ stunner wins Goal of the Week! ☄️@Heineken || #UCLGOTW pic.twitter.com/Waao6Lyq9Q
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) May 10, 2024
This is why I think Anthony Gordon would be really good on the left side of the attack, with Saka staying on the right. Then you have pace either side with both players who want to run in behind. It might suit Harry’s game more and create more balance in the team because Phil Foden is a fantastic player but he is so much more likely to drift inside and come towards the ball himself.
Let’s be clear, too: Harry did get his goal against Denmark.
There are times when his deeper position can stop him from getting on the end of attacks and much has been made about the fact he has only had two touches in the penalty area across both games — as highlighted in his touchmap above. But I’m not going to tell him what to do in the penalty area because he’s a master goalscorer. When your 36-goal domestic tally was more than any other player across Europe’s top five leagues last season, it is impossible to criticise that part of his game.
Out of possession, it was interesting to hear Gareth Southgate’s comments after the game on Thursday night.
“We know with the profile of the players we’ve got, we don’t feel the way to press is really high up the pitch,” Southgate said. “We don’t think that’s the physical level of the team at the moment. We’ve got to find a way of being more compact and being more difficult to play against than we found in the last three halves of football.”
As a team, the pressing was very passive and the numbers were stark. England’s 26 passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA) — used as a proxy of pressing intensity — was the second-least intense press that they have recorded across Euro 2020, World Cup 2022 and Euro 2024 games.
That was not just down to Harry. You are not telling me Harry Kane cannot press, of course he can. He may not be able to do it every single time, but he can be the trigger — when he goes, everyone else goes. He can still shut an angle down and send the defender on the ball into traffic towards a team-mate or the touchline.
The examples from the Denmark game are damning and it is a team issue. Denmark build out with their three centre-backs and two holding midfielders against England’s four forwards. That is already an inferior number, so Denmark will always have a spare man.
Harry is not tight to Jannik Vestergaard on the ball, but the team need to slide up here.
If Saka went 10 yards further forward towards Christensen, then Alexander-Arnold can push higher on Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and everyone else is locked on man-for-man. The worrying thing is that the players don’t know if they should go or not and that’s how Denmark get out.
It was also interesting listening to Harry’s own comments after the game.
“In general, when the teams drop a few players deeper, we’re not sure how to the get the pressure on and who is supposed to be going,” he said. “We’re struggling both with and without the ball, we’ll have to look at it back but the pressure in both games hasn’t been quite right and also with the ball it hasn’t been good enough — that’s the bottom line.”
Whether Harry’s recent back injury — that kept him out of the final few games of the season at Bayern Munich — is at the heart of the issue is another question, but the fact he was substituted after 69 minutes meant things clearly were not great.
In truth, there were a lot of things you could pick the bones out of on Thursday night, across the whole team.
It is not a case of leaving Harry out. Instead, you get legs around him — runners off the ball. I don’t care how experienced you are, all players need a little bit of help now and again and I’m sure he and Gareth will have been analysing the performance since Thursday.
For England, let’s stay calm. It takes one spark. It takes one good result. It takes one good goal. There will undoubtedly be changes against Slovenia and there will hopefully be plenty more football to play in this tournament.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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Courtesy : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5582902/2024/06/24/alan-shearer-harry-kane-euro-2024-analysis/