Harry Kane Offers Both an Attacking Threat and Tactical Problem for England

For a long time at Wembley on Tuesday, England were toothless, lacking the incisiveness or guile to break Switzerland down. Then Harry Kane came on, and there was a spark, a sense of ruthlessness that within 10 minutes had yielded a goal, setting England on their way to an eighth win out of eight in qualifying.

Welcome as Kane’s goal was, and more penetrative as England looked once he’d come on, though, he does give Roy Hodgson a tactical problem.

It’s essentially the same problem Hodgson faced before the World Cup last year. In the friendly against Denmark at Wembley in the March, England played a 4-3-3 with Wayne Rooney, Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling up front. It was lopsided, but it meant England had a solid three-man base in midfield and pace in forward areas. The plan, it appeared, was to play on the break in Brazil.

The problem was that Denmark sat men behind the ball and defended grimly. It was a game of astonishing tediousness Sturridge’s 82nd-minute goal won. The mood was of boredom and gloom, and that perhaps affected Hodgson, who had clearly been taken aback by the negative reaction to England’s 0-0 draw away to Ukraine.

By the first game of the World Cup, England had binned the 4-3-3 and were instead playing a 4-2-3-1. That got Rooney, Sterling, Sturridge and Danny Welbeck into the side, but it meant Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson were at the back of midfield. Neither of them is a natural holder, and England paid for the lack of protection they offered—in the defeat to Uruguay most obviously but also against Italy.

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By the time the qualifiers for the Euros had come around, Hodgson had gone back to the 4-3-3, with the back four protected in that first game, away to Switzerland, by Jack Wilshere, Jordan Henderson and Fabian Delph. That set out the template: England still have no out and out holder, but they can play a passer flanked by two scufflers, and weight of numbers and organisation can do the rest.

Michael Carrick and now Jonjo Shelvey have played instead of Wilshere—and arguably England’s most fluent performance in qualifying came with him in the side in the 4-0 home win over Lithuania—and Adam Lallana and James Milner have played in the flanking roles, but that paradigm has remained the same throughout.

In front of them have been three of Rooney, Sterling, Welbeck, Lallana, Jamie Vardy and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, either with two wide and Rooney central or with Sterling behind two more central players—a useful flexibility. That has been enough to win eight qualifiers out of eight, but it was only really in that first game, in Basel, that England faced anything like the test that will face them should they reach the European Championship's latter stages in France next year.

This is one of the problems of international football: The majority of qualifying games are not, in any meaningful sense, contests. Rather they feature one weaker side, inured by regular defeats to sitting deep and looking to deny the opposition space, trying to frustrate a stronger side. Being able to bundle six past San Marino or four past Lithuania is no indication of what might happen against Germany or Spain or France (all of whom England face in friendlies next month and in March).

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England’s obvious strength is their pace in forward areas, as they showed in the second half of that first game against Switzerland when Welbeck scored twice on the break.

But the problem of qualifying is that in most matches, they haven’t been able to play on the counter because hardly anybody has made any effort to attack them. The result has been dull, uninspiring football as England have slowly ground down dogged opponents. That they were able to do so, despite that not being their natural way of playing, is to their credit.

But it does cause a problem. England looked better against Switzerland with Kane on the pitch. He has a sharpness in the box, a capacity to find space and a natural poaching instinct that Rooney lacks. Rooney, as ever, looked better when he dropped into a position behind a main striker. But that means playing a 4-2-3- 1, and that risks the same problems that undermined the World Cup effort recurring.

Hodgson, it seems, can already see the clamour for Kane to start every game. “It’s more a case of the way the game was going, but that’s an option,” he said in the post-match press conference when asked whether Rooney and Kane playing together through the middle may represent the future. “Like the Swiss team who are quite flexible with their front players who move around and do different things. We can do that as well.”

It’s true that England can with Sterling behind Rooney and Welbeck in a 4-3-1-2—as they did away against Switzerland, when the capacity of both to pull wide, both creating space for Sterling and helping block in the opposing full-backs, was crucial. That is a potential way of playing Kane and Rooney together so long as Kane, like Welbeck, is happy to pull out to the flank when required.

But if the more orthodox 4-3-3 is the shape, it’s hard to see how Kane and Rooney could be accommodated, unless one plays on the flank. Six or seven years ago, Rooney was adept at doing that, but his performance on the left against Italy in the World Cup suggests that those days are behind him now.

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The other problem of starting with Kane is that he lacks the pace of Sturridge, Welbeck or Sterling—or even Theo Walcott. If England are to play on the break, then even in a 4-3-1-2 it’s hard to see how both Kane and Rooney, neither of them lightning-fast, could be accommodated.

It may be that England would have been more exciting, more effective, with Kane starting in qualifying, and it would be no huge surprise were he to start against Estonia and Lithuania next month. But that isn’t necessarily the best way to play against stronger teams; it isn’t necessarily the best preparation for the tournament itself.

Countless England coaches in the past have found themselves enslaved to personality, making compromises they would never make at club level to fit in players even if it meant them operating out of position or upsetting the harmony of the tactical whole.

Hodgson’s focus on having alternatives and options suggests he is aware of that, aware perhaps of how he allowed his instinctive pragmatism to be challenged in Brazil. Kane is a fine player and a useful addition to the squad, but it may be that if England play on the break, Hodgson has to carry on leaving him out of the starting lineup.

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise stated.