Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Late in the second half, as England comfortably knocked the ball around, winding down the clock at the end of a crushing win that locked up a berth in the World Cup’s knockout round and marked this team as one capable of a deep run here, a nagging thought began to take hold.
What have they done with the real England team?
Results like Sunday’s 6-1 rout of Panama aren’t supposed to happen to England at the World Cup. Clinically dispatching a lower-ranked opponent, putting the game to bed before halftime, picking up three points and a hatful of goals, that is what Germany or Brazil does.
England’s job when faced with an overmatched opponent at this tournament is not merely to slip up, but to stumble so spectacularly that the rest of the world gets to point and laugh. England’s history of misadventures against World Cup underdogs includes hapless draws against Algeria and Ireland and a humiliating defeat by a soccer upstart known as the U.S.
But a late goal and an eye-catching win in its opening game in Russia had hinted that England may have been ready to shed its reputation as the great chokers of the international game. Now this demolition of Panama has raised the possibility that it may even be ready for a new title: World Cup contender.
“With the squad we’ve got and the confidence flowing, I don’t see why not,” midfielder Jesse Lingard said afterward, when asked if England was now a threat to lift the trophy. “There’s a great team spirit at the moment, a lot of positivity to take into the next game.”
Granted, it will take a lot more than this drubbing of the world’s 55th-ranked team to give the rest of the World Cup field sleepless nights. But there was enough on show on a sticky afternoon at the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium to suggest England will trouble the world’s best teams, not least the form of its captain and star striker, Harry Kane.
Kane followed up his two-goal performance in England’s opening match with a hat-trick here, converting two penalty kicks in the first half, and adding a third goal—England’s sixth of the afternoon—when a long-range effort from Ruben Loftus-Cheek in the second half struck his heel and ballooned into the Panama net.
Kane knew nothing about the goal that completed his hat-trick. But in its way, that only underlines what makes him such a threat. Kane has a knack for knowing where the ball will drop, where the space will materialize. And when a chances falls to him, it usually ends up in the back of the net. He has scored with all five of his shots here in Russia and is on course to become the first English player to win the Golden Boot since Gary Lineker in 1986.
“There’s a long way to go but it’s going well,” Kane said of his ambition to finish as the tournament’s top scorer. “I’ve always said that the most important thing is that the team gets the win, but if my goals help my team win, that’s the perfect situation.”
The other thing that will alarm England’s upcoming opponents, beginning with Belgium on Thursday in a game that will determine which of those teams advances in first place, is its devastating proficiency at set pieces.
There is a school of thought that set pieces are dramatically undervalued in international soccer, where the limited time that teams have to train together mean that elaborate, sophisticated attacking moves are harder to pull off than for club teams, who practice together year-round.
Devoting a significant amount of training time to pre-rehearsed moves and choreographed routines off corners, free-kicks and throw-ins is more productive, the thinking goes, than practicing flowing moves in the hope of breaking down the opposition with multiple passes.
Gareth Southgate, the England manager, appears to have embraced this notion. No team in the tournament has looked as dangerous from dead-ball situations. Both goals in England’s opener against Tunisia came from corner kicks, and so did the opening goal here, when Kieran Trippier’s delivery was met by John Stones. unmarked in the center of the penalty area, who headed England into a eight-minute lead.
“We’ve identified that as a key area,” Southgate said afterward. “No matter how much you control the game and control possession, in tournaments, set pieces at both ends are very important.”
England’s set-piece know-how continued to torment Panama even after the opening goal, and following Kane’s first penalty and an outstanding third goal from Lingard, England made another breakthrough from a set-piece.
Trippier’s short free-kick found Jordan Henderson, who clipped a high pass into the area, where Kane planted a header back across goal. Sterling forced Panama’s Jaime Peneldo into a smart save, but Stone was on hand to head in the rebound.
That marked the fourth goal England had scored from set pieces, and it was another dead-ball delivery that led to England’s fifth goal. From a corner, Kane was dragged down by Anibal Godoy. He duly converted from the spot and, for the first time in its history, England had scored five goals in a World Cup match—and the game had yet to reach halftime.
In the second half, as the heat took hold, the pace dropped and the game began to resemble a preseason fixture, Southgate admitted he found it “quite strange” to watch an England team in such control at a World Cup.
But Panama coach Hernan Dario Gomez, a veteran of two previous World Cup appearances, was less surprised by what unfolded. In fact, he was simply grateful his team was able to escape without a heavier defeat.
“England are a very strong team, very powerful, they play with precision and are a capable of scoring beautiful goals,” said Gomez. “It was 5-0 at half-time, they finished with six goals. In truth, it could have been worse.”
Write to Jonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com
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