In the end, Harry Kane did almost everything Gareth Southgate had hoped he might. This game had gone, the visitors apparently broken by Leigh Griffiths’ pair of free-kicks, when Raheem Sterling cut inside and flung over one last desperate cross from the left and there, opening up his body in mid-air to meet the delivery as sweetly as he could, was England’s captain to guide home a first international goal in 13 months. The manager leapt into the air, his manic celebrations born as much of relief as delight. He had been at pains to point out that talent, eventually, will out. There was evidence of Kane’s pedigree in his timing.
Plucking that point from the dregs of a furious contest left the English buoyed, for all that the shortcomings of the team’s display in Glasgow will surely trouble Southgate over his summer. For Kane, the plunder was more personal. This had in effect been his audition, the fifth captain of Southgate’s tenure to date making his influence felt just as embarrassment – and a first loss to bitter rivals in more than 17 years – had beckoned. “It has ended as a special day,” he said. “To be 2-1 down in stoppage time from nowhere, getting that goal is special. We found another gear, and it feels like a good point.”
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