Harry Kane played down his latest goalscoring milestone on the night he helped fire England into the UEFA EURO 2020 finals.
The Three Lions skipper hit a first-half hat-trick as Gareth Southgate’s side cruised to a 7-0 win over Montenegro at Wembley.
His 19-minute treble moved him onto 31 international goals, and above Alan Shearer, Nat Lofthouse and Sir Tom Finney into sixth place on England’s all-time goalscoring list.
But the 26-year-old is taking it all in his stride.
Kane said: “It’s hard to sum up. I don’t really think about these things going into games. For me it’s always about the next one: the next goal, the next win, but of course it’s something that I’m extremely proud of.
“It’s something that I’ll look back on towards the end of my career with, hopefully, a few more goals and take it all in.
“For me it’s [about] carrying on scoring and trying to do my best for the team.
“It wouldn’t be possible without my team-mates setting me up and putting it on a plate for me. I just have to keep doing what I’m doing and we all have to keep working hard, and hopefully the goals keep on coming.”
It was a night of double celebration for England as they sealed their place at Euro 2020 on the occasion of their 1000th international match.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain opened the scoring before Marcus Rashford and Kane’s hat-trick made it 5-0 at half time.
Aleksandar Sofranac’s own goal and Tammy Abraham’s first senior team goal completed a resounding victory.
Kane added: “It was fantastic. We said before the game that we wanted to bring a lot of energy, a lot of goals and qualify in the right way, and we did that.
“5-0 up at half time: we couldn’t have asked for much more than that. To keep a clean sheet and finish it off with another couple of goals was a perfect night.”
England will complete their qualification campaign in Kosovo on Sunday and Kane says his team-mates have every reason to be confident heading into next summer’s showpiece event.
He said: “We’re going to have three games at Wembley at least and we have to use that to our advantage.
“We’ve got a lot of ability, a lot of great players, a lot of competition for places so we’re in a good spot.
“We know next summer’s going to be tough. There are a lot of top nations out there but we’ve got to be confident. We had a good World Cup – unfortunately we wanted to go all the way – but that’s got to be our aim in the summer.”
