Southgate must be brave again if captain Kane is failing to click

IT MUST have been a little unnerving for Harry Kane, watching from the sidelines as the final seconds of extratime ebbed away and penalties loomed ever closer.

- Dan Kilpatrick

Kane is never comfortable taking a back seat, and the last time he was hooked with minutes remaining of a knockout game, Bayern Munich conceded twice to collapse against Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final.

By the time penalties came around, though, Kane felt “really calm” and, as Gareth Southgate pointed out, it was a measure of the quality of England’s takers and their ‘process’ that they nervelessly navigated spot-kicks without their record goalscorer.

Kane had finally been replaced by Ivan Toney — who dispatched his penalty with a menacing swagger — in the 109th-minute after literally being bundled off the pitch and into Southgate by Manuel Akanji.

Perhaps it was the jolt or excuse Southgate needed to call time on his captain’s sluggish performance, made up of just 26, largely ineffective touches.