Roy Hodgson’s game plan for England completely wastes the talents of Tottenham striker Harry Kane
England manager Roy Hodgson’s poor use of Tottenham striker Harry Kane is about more than his bizarre choice to have him take his side’s free kicks. The Three Lions would be lucky if that was the only issue with Hodgson’s utilization of the Spurs talisman.
Quite a few members of the British media have taken Hodgson to task over having Kane take the team’s corner kicks and the England boss squarely deserves criticism on that front. The idea of having your best striker, who also happens to be an immense threat in the box, isolated out on the wing to whip in corners is borderline insane. Unfortunately for England fans, Hodgson’s lunacy goes deeper than that curious choice.
The biggest issue with Hodgson’s use of Kane is that he is prohibiting him from using one of his most important talents. Deploying Kane as your centre forward but prohibiting him from harassing the opposing fullbacks is a gross misuse of his terrific work rate.
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Part of what makes Kane so brilliant when playing for manager Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham is that he frequently forces the opposition into costly turnovers in their own half. Hodgson clearly instructed Kane to leave the Russian centre backs to their own devices in the team’s opening match in Euro 2016.
While Russia’s centre backs managed to give the ball away enough without Kane bothering to harass them, it still gave them a sense of comfort that ultimately allowed them to grow into the match. That comfort allowed Russia to salvage a key point which could cost England dearly in the long run.
If England is going to make its way out of the group stage, then Hodgson must unleash Kane. He has to be given the freedom to initiate some sort of press against Wales. If Hodgson continues to shackle him and force him to play passively, then he’ll continue to receive very ordinary play from his supremely talented forward.
Instead, Hodgson must quickly amend his strategy to garner three points versus Wales. The first step in correcting his errors would be to turn Kane loose to force Wales into forfeiting possession in their own third. That could be the key to providing England with enough offensive chances to take the Wales match by the scruff of the neck.
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Roy Hodgson deserves a lot of criticism after his team failure to capture three points against Russia. His biggest sin was wasting the insanely high work rate of Tottenham forward Harry Kane.