Lee Carsley confirms Harry Kane will start against Ireland

Once again, Harry Kane is the first name on the team-sheet. Lee Carsley was still in Athens when he confirmed the England captain would start tomorrow.
For eight years, Gareth Southgate rarely needed to offer that information three days early, to try and deflect charges Kane had fallen out of favour. If he was fit, he played.

Now? Kane was fit and began on the bench against Greece. Others were fit, the striker had implied, and did not turn up.

Kane appeared to be the last man standing up for the values of the Southgate era, when players enjoyed turning up for international duty. Carsley refused to criticise the no-shows, was happy to finish with a glorified U-21 side and beat Greece 3-0. Kane had a bit-part role.

He had been outspoken before the game, Carsley more cautious. The interim manager showed a bolder streak in his choices. Yet his post-match rhetoric invited a question: when is a dropping not a dropping?

“I definitely didn’t drop Harry Kane,” he insisted. “He’s done well for me every game he’s played and been involved with. It wasn’t a case of being dropped, far from it. It was just a case of giving someone an opportunity.”

For many, omitting a fit, normally first-choice player from a competitive game qualifies as dropping him. Carsley claimed not. He was justified in opting for Ollie Watkins when Kane’s usual understudy got the seventh-minute opener. Carsley did not really crow.

“Ollie is playing in the Champions League with Villa, he’s doing really well, the same with Morgan Rogers,” he said. “It’s great that he got a goal. It looks like a great decision then, doesn’t it?”

There have been points when Kane’s pre-eminence came amid a lack of options. Not now, with Watkins’ rise, his Euro 2024 semi-final winner, and Dominic Solanke offering another alternative.

And yet the greats – and by England’s standards, their record scorer, a World Cup Golden Boot winner and the only man to captain them in two finals, definitely qualifies – tend to be protected, no matter which players are excelling at club level.

Carsley dropped – or rotated or sidelined to give someone else an opportunity – Kane when he is in form for Bayern Munich, with 16 goals in 17 games. Southgate kept him in the team throughout Euro 2024, albeit taking to substituting a labouring presence.

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Yet keeping Kane on the pitch for most of the tournament, and with him as penalty-taker, meant he still got another Golden Boot. ​

The chances are that Thomas Tuchel will conform to Southgate’s school of thought: that Kane plays. He always did for Tuchel’s Bayern, though he did score 44 goals in 45 games after his €100m move; Kane could have hardly picked an England manager more likely to restore his privileged status.

Carsley’s great experiment, or risk, came in the context that it might not actually change England’s history at all.

But there was a tactical significance.

“We’ve got some explosive players in the team and we had legs,” Carsley said. In contrast, Kane looked leggy in Euro 2024. And the balance of the team was different now.

Each of the front three had the speed and the willingness to run behind defences, whereas too few players did that in the summer. Watkins had two fine chances: he spurned the second, but it came from a defence-splitting pass from Rico Lewis and a burst behind the Greece back four. Could Kane have done that?