Key events
Half-time postbag. “I know for many folks an elongated international break is not terribly popular, but this England squad is certainly benefitting from it. Some of the interpassing has had a much higher level of mutual understanding and the general fluidity of positional swapping has been actually quite thrilling at times. And Bellingham … phew!” – Dean Kinsella
“And to think that ten years ago, Gary Neville had Kane taking corners” – Andrew Goudie
ShareHALF TIME: England 2-0 Czechia
… much to frustrated Czech captain Coufal’s chagrin. He tells it as he sees it to the referee, who fires back a few truths of his own. England meanwhile wander off down the tunnel, half the job completed without fuss.
45 min +1: Guehi clumsily skittles Lingr out on the left. Sadílek sends the free kick in. Quansah heads behind for a corner there’s no time to take. The whistle goes …
45 min: … and Alexander-Arnold swings it in. Long. Anderson and Bellingham take turns to fashion space for a shot; neither manage to do so. There will be one additional first-half minute.
44 min: Hall sends the corner long. Kane competes at the far stick, and earns another corner. This one will come in from the left …
43 min: Kane bustles down the right and competes for a ball he’s got no right to win. But Sadílek hesitates, Kane closes him down, and the ball pings out for a corner. From which …
42 min: That’ll be 90 goals in 125 matches, then. Breaking news: Harry Kane is good. England are good.
ShareGOAL! England 2-0 Czechia (Kane 40)
Anderson shovels a cute pass down the right for Rogers, who cushions a volley through the six-yard box. Kane, his run perfectly timed, opens his body and slams home. He couldn’t miss! What a way to celebrate cap number 125!
Harry Kane sweeps the ball home to double England’s lead against Czechia. Photograph: Matthew Childs/Action Images/ReutersKane celebrates. Photograph: Toby Melville/ReutersShare
Updated at 15.39 EDT
39 min: Eze has a chance to cross from the left but decides to turn tail, irritating the crowd a tad. He lays off to Hall, who doesn’t hesitate and delivers. The ball’s hacked clear. A fair chance we’ll see Gordon in the second half?
37 min: The pace drops a bit. As does the atmosphere. All a little bit flat at the moment.
35 min: … so having said that, Guehi takes a poor touch on halfway and allows Sadílek to make off with the ball. England are suddenly light at the back, and are fortunate Šulc butchers a cross from the left with red shirts infield. A timely reminder for England that the job’s not done yet.
33 min: This match is being almost exclusively played out in Czechia’s half. A second England goal feels merely a matter of time.
31 min: It’s not the most original of observations, but … Thomas Tuchel should have taken Trent Alexander-Arnold to the World Cup, shouldn’t he?
Answer: Yes.
29 min: Kane drops deep and creams a diagonal pass towards Alexander-Arnold on the right. Alexander-Arnold sends an instant low cross into the centre. Rogers, his back to goal, cushions the ball into the path of Anderson, who lashes a wild shot miles over the bar. Anderson wears the look of a player who knows he should have worked Horníček at the very least. He probably should have scored.
ShareGOAL! England 1-0 Czechia (Coufal og 27)
Bellingham flicks a pass down the inside-right channel for Kane, who whips a low cross into the box. Coufal thinks Eze is closer than he actually is, and, facing his own goal, extends a leg and diverts the ball past his keeper and into the net. One of the great unforced errors, but hats off to Kane for delivering a ball that put the defender into a blind panic.
Harry Kane sticks in a pearler off a cross … Photograph: Paul Harding/The FA/Getty ImagesWhich a stretching Czechia’s Vladimir Coufal puts into his own net. Photograph: Adam Davy/PAShare
Updated at 15.21 EDT
26 min: Bellingham finds Rogers again. Rogers hoicks a wild cross out of play on the left. Seconds earlier, Bellingham stretched for Alexander-Arnold’s right-wing cross but couldn’t quite get there. Bellingham is everywhere.
24 min: Bellingham wedges a diagonal defence-splitter to Morgan, rushing into the Czechia box from the right. Morgan lifts the ball over Horníček, but it’s neither a shot or an effective cross, and the ball bounces harmlessly wide left and out for a goal kick.
23 min: Eze cuts in from the left and rolls a pass to Kane, who has his back to goal on the penalty spot. Kane considers turning and whipping, but his man is touch-tight so he lays off to Morgan instead. Morgan opens his body and attempts to pass into the bottom left. The ambitious effort is blocked.
21 min: England were two up by this point in Croatia on Saturday. Speaking of which, Ivan Perišić has put the Croats ahead against Spain.
20 min: Ambros crosses low from the right, forcing Guehi to stoop and head out for a throw. Coufal flings it long into the mixer, but England deal with the resulting kerfuffle without drama, and clear easily enough.
18 min: Anderson closes down Horníček’s pass out from the back. The keeper’s forced to parry the rebound away from goal. But there’s nobody else in white to take advantage. Czechia go up the other end, Lingr winning their first corner of the evening, from which nothing comes. This match not quite got going yet.
16 min: Anderson shovels a pass down the inside-left channel for … the right-back Alexander-Arnold, who bursts into the box and wins a corner. Shades of Total Football.
14 min: Rogers strides in from the right. An opportunity to shoot. He takes it … and balloons wildly over the bar. Miles over, and a good distance wide left as well. A decent chance for a player of his goalscoring ability.
13 min: Another free kick for England 30 yards out. Kane takes it quickly, wedging down the inside-right channel in the hope of releasing Rogers into the box. Horníček gets to the ball first, palming away bravely before taking a whack from Rogers for his trouble. Both players stay down awhile; both players get up again soon enough. Free kick to Czechia, who clear their lines.
11 min: Anderson intercepts a loose Czech pass and has the opportunity to advance into a big gap down the middle, but lays off to Kane instead, and the momentum is gone. Bellingham tries his darndest to inject some new energy into the move, with a couple of cute pirouettes, but the Czechs have regrouped and there’s no room any more.
9 min: Alexander-Arnold and Rogers link up down the right, the former dinking a cross into the middle that’s too high for Kane to divert goalwards.
8 min: The England band strike up their parping. “It’s time to bin the awful England band,” opines Andrew Goudie. “Nobody likes them, including the players, I suspect. The team performs much better when the band isn’t there.”
7 min: Alexander-Arnold and Bellingham confuse each other, 30 yards out, and Král nips in between them to advance down the left. Král ruffles the side netting with a low drive that Pickford had covered.
6 min: … leads to nothing.
5 min: Alexander-Arnold whips the free kick over the wall and towards the bottom left. Horníček does exceptionally well to tip it around the post. Was it going wide? Maybe. Perhaps it was hitting the post. The keeper couldn’t take any chance. And then the corner …
4 min: Pickford launches long, and Rogers brings the ball down elegantly. Král comes bumbling in, not so elegantly, and clanks Rogers to the floor. A free kick in a central position, 25 yards out. Alexander-Arnold’s eyes light up. Looks like he fancies this.
3 min: Pickford, who had a couple of flaps in Croatia last weekend, dallies with the ball at his feet and is very nearly closed down by Naderi. Say what you will, but Pickford’s never a dull watch, one way or another.
2 min: Alexander-Arnold’s first act upon his return is to misplace a pass down the right flank. Rogers not on his wavelength there.
Czechia get the ball rolling. The Wembley crowd gently rumbling rather than raving. “I was at Brisbane Road for Peter Shilton’s 1,000th league appearance where he was in goal for Orient against Brighton at the age of 47,” recalls Ian Burch. “Welcomed onto the pitch with balloons, a red carpet and a silver salver, he kept a clean sheet as the O’s won 2-0. Five games later he was shown the door. O’s manager Tommy Taylor said he let Shilts go as his goal kicks were not making the halfway line bless him, something which was required of every keeper in the old Division Three.”
Peter Shilton is applauded onto the pitch. Photograph: Colorsport/ShutterstockShilts returns the applause. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty ImagesIn addition to the silver salver and a special Carling No1 trophy, the veteran keeper was presented with an award by the Guinness Book of Records. Photograph: Gary M Prior/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 15.01 EDT
The teams are out! England in white, Czechia in red. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes. “Can’t wait for this,” begins Dave Estherby. “Because of Kane’s cap record? Because I love watching England?? Because I’m a huge fan of the Nations League??? Nope, it’s just one less day to wait for the proper stuff, namely the brouhaha that is going to ensue at Anfield on Sunday.”
Some slapstick shenanigans on ITV as the Wembley water sprinklers turn on Ian Wright, Roy Keane and Mark Pougatch as Wright is mid-soliloquy in praise of Jude Bellingham. It’s not quite up there with your Harry Redknapp and Martin Keown touchline classics, but mildly entertaining nonetheless. Wright doesn’t look particularly amused, and tries to style it out by joking about all his wasted prep for the Bellingham bit, though his light-coloured suit now has moist patches, and one suspects he’s more concerned about the spatter than his patter. Keane remains admirably unperturbed, though you’d still pay cash money to witness any back-and-forth that may occur with the Wembley groundsman later on.
There’s a better-than-evens chance of England effectively qualifying for March’s quarter-finals tonight. Should they – as expected – beat Czechia, and should Spain – as expected – see off Croatia, England would find themselves comfortably in second spot on nine points, with the Croats in third on three. That wouldn’t put the Three Lions officially over the line, but Croatia would then only be able to at best tie England on points by the end of the group phase in November; in that scenario, it’d then go to the head-to-head, and the only way Croatia could win that is if they’d beaten England by an eight-goal margin at Wembley. Fair play if all this comes to pass.
Harry Kane, 124 caps and counting, speaks to ITV ahead of the next, and fairly important, one. “It’s always special … just seeing Wembley … I never take it for granted … it’s obviously a special night but we have to focus on the job … [my debut] was just as I dreamt it … I am extremely proud to represent England … that was an amazing moment for me, and I’ve been lucky to do it again a fair few times! … we’ve been extremely close [to winning a trophy] on many occasions … we’re closer than we’ve ever been before … we still have to prove it on the bigger stage … we’re in a good place, I’m in a good place, the team is looking really strong and hungry … we keep testing ourselves … hopefully the best is yet to come.”
A Harry Kane fan in the stands. Photograph: Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 14.41 EDT
Thomas Tuchel speaks to ITV. “There is never a perfect 90 minutes but it was a very, very good 90 minutes … a very impressive performance on and off the ball … for the whole period of the match … we felt it straight away from the start that we had a good performance … we have improved in the movements when Harry Kane drops … we have Jude Bellingham a bit closer to him … if both drop, Anthony Gordon and Bukayo Saka were always ready to go through the last line … we have worked on that … to fill the box … we had four or five people in the box … we are getting there … the front four love to play with each other … very dangerous … have full support from behind … I am hoping Morgan Rogers can prove a point today because we are saving some legs … [the longer international break] for patterns is very good … the language sinks in … a different style of play from the clubs … if you have more than two games you can have a training session, show, debrief … let the patterns sink in.”
Tuchel also reminisces about his time playing as a child in the back garden, pretending to be Peter Shilton and/or Ray Clemence. A laugh and a smile with ITV’s Mark Pougatch. He’s as relaxed and carefree as you’d expect for a man who has just seen his team score seven goals away from home.
Some more on the Shilton-bothering antics of England’s current captain. (We are of course assuming Kane won’t do himself a mischief in the warm-up. Shilts must be cursing that alternate-appearance arrangement with Ray Clemence during the late 1970s, huh?)
Updated at 13.46 EDT
The big news – of course – is Harry Kane’s record-equalling appearance for England. He leads the line tonight and by doing so, earns his 125th cap. He joins Peter Shilton at the head of a distinguished list (see below). Shilton took 21 years to clock up that number of caps; Kane has just needed 11, since coming on for Wayne Rooney against Lithuania as a 21-year-old in 2015 and taking just 79 seconds to score his first international goal.
The other bits of team news aren’t insignificant, though. Trent Alexander-Arnold, who made his first start for England in nearly two years last week in Prague, but sat out the weekend rout of Croatia, reclaims his spot at right-back. Jarell Quansah, who took his place in Rijeka, moves to the centre of defence. Meanwhile Myles Lewis-Skelly deputises for the injured Alex Scott, while Eberechi Eze replaces the in-form Anthony Gordon on the left flank. Morgan Rogers also gets a start.
Updated at 13.42 EDT
The teams
England: Pickford, Alexander-Arnold, Quansah, Guehi, Hall, Anderson, Bellingham, Lewis-Skelly, Rogers, Kane, Eze.
Subs: Trafford, Steele, Saka, Gordon, Chalobah, Ngumoha, Branthwaite, Garner, Calvert-Lewin, Gibbs-White, Lewis.
Czechia: Horníček, Coufal, Vitík, Hranáč, Sláma, Král, Sadílek, Šulc, Ambros, Naderi, Lingr.
Kovář, Kinský, Kričfaluši, Zmrzlý, Vašulín, Hložek, Sejk, Šubert, Bucha, Radosta, Macek, Sáček.
Referee: Serdar Gözübüyük (Netherlands).
Updated at 14.19 EDT
Some early team news. It’s piping hot off the press, courtesy of our man at Wembley, Jacob Steinberg …
double quotation markTrent Alexander-Arnold is expected to get another chance at right-back tonight. He impressed in Prague last week. Eberechi Eze is also poised to make his first start of this camp.
It’s going to be a big evening for our Admin and Housekeeping department, as a couple of tables will need significantly updating by the end of it. First up there’s Group A3 of the Nations League, which currently stands like this …
1. Spain P3 GD+6 Pts 9
2. England P3 GD+8 Pts 6
3. Croatia P3 GD-9 Pts 3
4. Czechia P3 GD-5 Pts 0
… and there’ll also be the small matter of England men’s all-time appearance chart, the top of which is forecast to be hit by a crossfire Harry Kane. It’s a gas, gas, gas!
125: Peter Shilton
124: Harry Kane
120: Wayne Rooney
115: David Beckham
114: Steven Gerrard
108: Bobby Moore
107: Ashley Cole
106: Bobby Charlton, Frank Lampard
105: Billy Wright
96: Kyle Walker
94: John Stones
91: Jordan Henderson, Jordan Pickford
90: Bryan Robson
SharePreamble
Czechia have played 14 matches in the last 12 months. They’ve only won four of them: against San Marino, Gibraltar, Kosovo and Guatemala. They’ve lost their last four straight: against Mexico, Croatia, Spain and … England, who by contrast are coming off the back of a third-placed finish at the World Cup, a decent showing against the new world champions, and an historic win in Croatia. We could go on – England are fourth in the Fifa rankings, the Czechs 50th – but there’s nothing to be gained in belabouring the point … and in any case football doesn’t always work like that, which is why we keep turning up and tuning in. Will England consolidate their position in Group A3 with a view to making next spring’s quarter-finals, or can the Czechs spring a surprise and keep their (admittedly faint) hopes alive? We find out from 7.45pm BST. It’s on!