The England-Slovenia match this Tuesday in Cologne (9:00 p.m., La1) calls for, more than the outcome of a mere soccer match, the possible unraveling of one of the most unfathomable enigmas of this Euro Cup. In just ten days, Gareth Southgate’s team has gone from being the main favorite to win the tournament, along with France, to being shown as meaningless that has led to a loud public brawl between its captain and all-time top scorer, Harry Kane, and Gary Lineker, captain in the nineties, fourth on the list of scorers and today a commentator.
The tension is maximum around the team despite the fact that it occupies first place in its group and has secured a place in the round of 16. But what he has displayed on the field is incomprehensible. After the draw against Denmark in the second match (1-1), Lineker summed up the performance of one of the tournament’s most dazzling collections of talent as “shit”. Until the ex-footballer’s intervention in the podcast The Rest si Football, dozens of journalists and analysts had gone around such a blunt conclusion to express what England had suggested to them.
The shockwaves from the trial of Lineker, the BBC’s leading voice on football, sparked an unusual move. The English captain did not appear this Monday on the eve of the match against Slovenia, as he usually does, but rather brought his appearance forward a day. He appeared before the media on Sunday at his team’s base of operations and showed his discomfort with Lineker’s harsh judgment: “I would never disrespect any former player,” he began. “These former players who are now commentators have to realize that it is not easy to listen to them. They have to understand that they have a responsibility. “People give importance to what they say.”
Despite his restraint, Kane also allowed himself a small blow to the old glories that were destroying them. He reminded them that they had not won a title with the national team either: “Everyone has their opinion, but the reality is that we have not won anything in a long time, and many of these players were part of that, so they know how hard what is it”.
Lineker was not convinced by Kane’s argument, and this Monday he returned to the fray on the podcast: “Can you imagine if we said: ‘Well, I think they played very well’? “We would be lying to begin with because they didn’t play well, and Harry knows they didn’t play well.” He is usually accompanied in space by Alan Shearer, also a former English captain, who did not lift a finger this Monday: “I wouldn’t take back anything we said. They were very bad and I think most of the journalists and the country know it, and even the guys on the team themselves: they were horrible against Denmark.”
Kane did not deny it: “Have I played at my best? No, but in the group stages of the last Euros and the last World Cup I didn’t score and then I improved.” However, the criticism was not aimed at the individual, but at the collective disarray, with Foden, Bellingham and the captain occupying the same spaces; and with Trent Alexander-Arnold somewhat lost in his move from right back to midfield.
In those stormy hours, Foden, a determining factor in Guardiola’s Manchester City, adrift with Southgate, also spoke out: “I have the feeling that the intensity has increased a little,” he said about the last training sessions before this Tuesday’s confrontation. , which more than a match is a crossroads for Kane’s England.
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