Messi deserves the Ballon d\u2019Or: Mbappe<\/a><\/p>\nHis record-extending 62nd goal for England came after a slick series of passes that sliced through Malta\u2019s defense and raised the tone of an often drab game between teams ranked fourth and 171st in the world.<\/p>\n
While England took the lead in the eighth minute from an own goal by Malta defender Enrique Pepe, neither team produced a shot on target from any attacker until the 64th minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a game where we didn\u2019t start well and if you don\u2019t start well it is hard to pick the game up,\u201d England coach Gareth Southgate acknowledged.<\/p>\n
The most surprising moment in the first half \u2014 at least for Kane himself \u2014 was when he was shown a yellow card for simulation when thinking he had earned a penalty. Replays showed Kane appearing to push his left foot into contact with the onrushing Malta goalkeeper Henry Bonello.<\/p>\n
Southgate took the opportunity to give a debut to Cole Palmer as a second-half substitute, capping a week when the Chelsea playmaker scored a late penalty in a 4-4 thriller against his former club Manchester City, and gave Liverpool right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold a more creative role in midfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he used the ball really well,\u201d Southgate said of Alexander-Arnold. \u201cHe has outstanding quality and him and Phil (Foden) in the first half were the two who looked like opening the game up for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The win should ensure England is among the group winners with the best records who are in the pot of top-seeded teams when the Euro 2024 draw is made on December 2 in Hamburg.<\/p>\n
Who joins England in Germany as runner-up in the group will be decided in a showdown game Monday between Ukraine and Italy, who are now level on points.<\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s 5-2 win over North Macedonia on Friday gave the defending champion the tiebreaker edge over Ukraine. Italy needs only a draw Monday to advance when Ukraine hosts that game in Leverkusen, Germany.<\/p>\n
\nComments\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The Bayern Munich striker extended his scoring streak in a prolific season to eight straight games for club and country in a routine win for England, which had already secured the Group E win last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":8899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-sport-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8900,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions\/8900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}