Captain Harry Kane led the way with a hat-trick as England stormed into the knockout stages of the World Cup with a 6-1 thrashing of Panama.
Gareth Southgate’s side had squeezed past Tunisia in their opening Group G game thanks to a stoppage-time winner from their skipper, but there was no late drama in a one-sided clash in Nizhny Novgorod.
Kane and John Stones both scored twice in the first half, the former converting a pair of penalties as England netted five before the break against their beleaguered opponents.
However, Jesse Lingard registered the pick of England’s first-half strikes, bending a shot home with his right foot after being teed up by Raheem Sterling, who – despite media conjecture in the week – kept his place in the starting XI.
Kane enjoyed a slice of good fortune to secure his treble, inadvertently deflecting Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s drive beyond goalkeeper Jaime Penedo, for his fifth of the tournament, moving him clear of Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku in the battle for the Golden Boot.
Substitute Felipe Baloy created history with Panama’s first goal in the finals, though England’s emphatic win sees them join Belgium – who they face in Kaliningrad on Thursday – in qualifying from the group.
Panama actually enjoyed the first good chance – Anibal Godoy slicing a clear sight of goal wide with his left foot – before they left a canal-sized gap for an unmarked Stones to thump home a header from Kieran Trippier’s corner.
The early goal opened the floodgates. Kane emphatically converted a penalty to make it 2-0 following a foul on Lingard, who was next to find the net with a sublime curling finish with his right foot from the edge of the area.
A clever set-piece move set up Stones for the next, the centre-back on hand to nod home the rebound after goalkeeper Penedo had impressively kept out Sterling’s close-range header.
Kane completed the first-half carnage with a mirror image of his earlier penalty, hammering the ball into Penedo’s top right corner after referee Ghead Grisha had spotted a foul on the forward by Fidel Escobar, albeit he was not the only offender as Panama felt holding was their only hope of stemming the English tide.
Having enjoyed watching his team-mates run up the score, Jordan Pickford made a brave block on Murillo. Yet the Everton goalkeeper was unable to stop veteran Baloy’s first-time attempt from Ricardo Avila’s free-kick, sparking huge celebrations on the field, in the dugout and also in the stands.
Panama rightly enjoyed their consolation goal, but Kane and England will hog the headlines after a resounding result that will further raise hopes back home of a repeat of their 1966 triumph.
Key Opta Stats:
– England have won both of their opening two group-stage games at a World Cup tournament for the third time, also doing so in 1982 and 2006.
– This was England’s biggest ever win in a major tournament match.
– This was only the fifth occasion a side had scored five goals before half-time in a World Cup match, and the first since Germany did so against Brazil in the 2014 semi-final.
– England scored as many goals in this match as they had in their previous seven World Cup matches combined (6).
– Only in 1966 (11) have England scored more goals in a single World Cup tournament than they have in 2018 (8, same as 1954 and 1990).
– Panama have conceded nine goals across their first two World Cup matches. The last time anyone conceded more in their first ever two fixtures was in 1974, with Zaire shipping 11 and Haiti conceding 10.
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