In defence of weird, silly games of football. How to spin this? With Qatar 2022 qualification ON THE LINE in San Marino Harry Kane produced a sensational first‑half four‑goal blitz. Hmm. Perhaps not. With Qatar 2022 qualification not – OK, fine – realistically on the line England sent out a stunning message with a clinical show of penalty-taking, goal-prodding and lunge‑hurdling. No. Maybe not that, either.
There is on the face of it no defence for this game of attack versus no-defence, this 10-0 mauling, this exercise in mild sporting absurdity. Watching England shuttle the ball around beneath the sallow green lights, on a pitch that brought frequent tobogganing slides, the modern slipper-boot unsuited to this kind of surface, it would be easy to make a rather earnest case for this kind of thing to be consigned to the dustbin for good, for that long-promised format rethink.
Who does this benefit, we will ask? How does this progress the game? What about the risk of injury? What about the robustness of statistics? What about, well, the basic silliness of all this? “We want 10,” the basking, joshing knot of England fans sang on their terrace. Did they think it was pointless? Probably. But they also seemed to be having quite a lot of fun.
These games are both very easy and very difficult. Winning them is easier than ever. Such is the skill, the fitness, the athleticism of elite footballers now, it is basically impossible for players at San Marino’s level to compete.
The difficulty lies in taking anything from these occasions. There will be moments in tougher games when England will attack against massed defences, so there is value in finding a way to penetrate those lines. But beyond the training pitch aspect these games have zero bearing on tournament football.
It is simply a free hit, a stats‑gaming opportunity; and a chance to talk, earnestly about stopping this from ever happening again. But then this is still sport, still at bottom a thing that makes you smile or feel surprised. And there was a lot of that here. First, there was Harry Kane’s utterly ruthless and also very funny pursuit of the England goals record. But the best thing about this game was the verve and skill of England’s younger players.
We know by now that Jude Bellingham is a hugely mature, intelligent and disciplined 18-year-old. Here he just got to run around, do wonderful little things, and generally look like a million dollars. That cant be bad, can it? Best of all was the linkup of Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe on the left, old pals and now comicbook-story England teammates.
The first half belonged to Captain Goal-Maniac. The Stadio Olimpico di Serravalle was a dingy, beige-tinged place at kick-off. But all lingering sense of jeopardy evaporated as it became clear San Marino weren’t even very good at getting in the way.
With five minutes gone Harry Maguire headed in from a corner. Haters safely silenced, he restricted himself to pointing at the fans. Saka, who played really well, forced an own-goal second. Kane scored the third with a penalty after a weird handball and hilarious VAR interlude, which involved the referee hunching over his monitor staring at a repeated loop of Dante Rossi raising his arm like a seven-year-old who knows the capital of Belgium, while the ball brushed his finger pointlessly.
As the floodlights flickered, as England’s fans jeered and laughed the referee continued to watch his loop of ball-flick finger crime. Eventually he gave the penalty with a sudden raise of the arm, a moment of masterly theatrical absurdity.
Kane’s second was a scuffed trickle. His hat-trick was another penalty spanked with sadistic power into the top corner. Half-time score: 6-0. At that stage Kane had scored seven goals in his last 108 minutes of football. He has 48 overall. Wayne Rooney is now decisively in his hunting sights.
But the real fun wasn’t the numbers stuff. It can often seem an anomaly that we still use the word “player” to describe these professionals. Play suggests carefree enjoyment. Elite footballers don’t play. They sweat and frown and carry out a furiously detailed brief. Probably we should come up with some new term. Ball-sport worker. Human run-kick unit. Real-time tactics-lever.
Here it was nice to see some play. Smith Rowe and Saka were a serious threat. But they had fun too, passing, linking up and generally spinning about like a pair of kittens scurrying around the skirting board, chasing dust balls, pawing at spiders. Smith Rowe scored a lovely goal, made by Saka and Tammy Abraham, who also got one and looked very pleased.
It could have been 15 or 20. And yes, it does feel like the clock is ticking on this kind of thing, that there is no money here, that it doesn’t feel like The Product, that TV doesn’t like it and the clubs certainly don’t. But England were impressive on the night. And who knows, this might just feel like a fond little interlude as the world closes in and the (impossibly) serious stuff begins once again.
