Kane’s brace seals England’s Euro 2024 spot

Harry Kane’s brace secured England’s place at the 2024 Euro Championships scheduled for Germany as the Three Lions defeated Italy 3-1 at Wembley in a repeat of Euro 2020 final between both teams.

The Three Lions needed just a point to seal qualification into Euro 2024, joining the eight other teams who had secured their places before Tuesday’s fixtures. Italy also needed a victory, which would have secured their place automatically, but they knew that getting one at Wembley Stadium was always going to be difficult.

Either way, the Italians went ahead after 15 minutes, with Gianluca Scammaca opening the scoring and Harry Kane leveled from the penalty spot on the 30-minute mark. Marcus Rashford put the home side into the lead early in the second half before Harry Kane ensured the win in the 77th minute.

England manager Gareth Southgate praised his team for their hunger and eagerness to get the victory and said it was a moral post ahead of November’s international fixture.

“So hungry, so eager to learn, so together. And you saw that in the performance tonight. We said before that mentality was the main thing. The performance was relentless tonight.”We need to make sure we are one of the top seeds next month. We need to win our next two games. We want to be in control of that. We need to keep building. There is more to come from this team. This was the toughest qualifying group, with the seedings. People have criticized us for not beating the top teams enough. But we have performed really well.” Southgate said.

In other fixtures, Denmark beat San Marino 2-1, Finland lost at home to Kazakhstan 1-2, and Malta also dropped 3-1 to Ukraine. Elsewhere, Hungary and Lithuania played out a 2-2 draw, Northern Ireland lost to Slovenia 1-0, and Serbia beat Montenegro 3-1.

Daniel Ademiju Idowu