NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia – With two penalty kicks and an accidental deflection, Harry Kane moved ahead of soccer greats David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo and put England into the knockout stage at the World Cup.
Kane scored half of England’s goals Sunday in a 6-1 rout of Panama, the national team’s largest-ever margin of victory at the tournament.
“The third one is probably one of the luckiest ones of my career,” said Kane, who took the game ball to the locker room. “Sometimes you go through spells where you are scoring, and sometimes it doesn’t fall for you.
“Not many players get to score a hat trick in a World Cup.”
Kane has scored a tournament-leading five goals in Russia, one more than Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku and Portugal’s Ronaldo. He also has 18 all-time for England’s national team, one more than Beckham, the retired star midfielder.