Harry ‘Pain’ doesn’t end up like Saka, Rashford and Sancho

Bitter night for all British fans, who nevertheless seem to have ‘learned’ their lesson

He had the equalizing ball on the penalty spot. In front of him Hugo Lloris, companion of many battles in a Spurs shirt but already pierced, just 30′ earlier, with a perfect penalty kick. Impossible. Perhaps a victim of the psychological game in front of a goalkeeper who knows him better than anyone else, the English bomber — who with the first penalty had joined a certain Wayne Rooney at the top of the list of England’s most prolific all-time national team bombers — shot sky high.

And so once again, because of a penalty kick – as already happened in the Euro 2020 final, when Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were the ones to miss – England has to say goodbye to its dreams of glory. And yes, the ‘Three Lions’ had also shown, for large parts of the match, that they at least deserved the extra-time epilogue.

At the end of the ill-fated match, the online edition of ‘The Sun’ headlined, playing on the pronunciation of the Tottenham striker’s surname , ‘Harry Pain’, emphasizing the pain – from the English ‘pain’, precisely – for its captain’s mistake. This time, however, the English fans, who had literally crucified on social media the three young boys guilty of missing from the eleven meters their respective penalties in the Wembley final against Italy, have ‘forgiven’ their striker, lavishing support and understanding. Perhaps a meager consolation, but not too much to underestimate either, for Kane, whose centrality in the British national team is absolutely beyond question.