Braving the Tampa Heat with the English
The heat was hot, but Harry Kane stayed hotter.
In the third minute of first-half stoppage time, Kane’s header broke the scoreless deadlock and injected some life into what was predominantly a humid, sluggish 1-0 victory for the Three Lions in their World Cup warm-up match against New Zealand.
The 32-year-old striker is in the midst of one of his greatest individual seasons to date, having just finished a domestic double campaign with Bayern Munich in which he scored an eye-popping 61 goals in 51 matches. In the coming weeks, he will look to add to his equally astonishing national team total of 79 goals in 113 caps for England.
The All Whites, fresh off a 4-0 drilling at the hands of a surprisingly apt Haitian side on Tuesday night, responded to the doubts likely circulating amongst their camp after that flat performance. They packed it in defensively, and their diligence, along with the oppressive Florida temperatures, provided more than enough frustration for the high-powered England attack. It was a showing that both teams will look to build upon as official World Cup play begins next week.
In Saturday’s win, their first competitive action since arriving in the US, Kane continued to be Old Faithful up front for the Three Lions, but throughout much of the match, they lacked the fine-tuned finishing touch that they will need in spades in the coming weeks.
Assisting the goal with a cross into the box was fullback Djed Spence of nearly-relegated Tottenham, who was one of several selections to the World Cup squad that drew no shortage of question marks from English fans and pundits.
Meanwhile, off the pitch, Raymond James Stadium played host to one of world football’s most notoriously passionate fanbases. As someone born and raised in Tampa who is both a lifelong Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan and a supporter of Manchester United, one of the most storied and well-known English football clubs on Earth, the entire experience was more than a little surreal.
I happened to join a fellow United supporter, himself an actual native of Manchester, on the walk towards the match. In conversation, I made sure to clarify that the stadium is publicly owned by the city of Tampa and not the Glazer family.
“I guess we won’t tear it down, then,” he jested.
For context, the Glazers famously own both the Bucs and the Red Devils, and fans of the latter, without getting into the well-documented, completely justifiable, myriad reasons why, are absolutely fed up with that fact. I am most certainly among them.
Many a protest has been held outside Old Trafford and many a YouTube documentary has been made about the Glazers, United, and the total disdain of the fans for the club’s American owners. Needless to say, it all added to the aforementioned surrealness of the event we were both headed towards.
In the lead-up to the match, I managed to catch a glimpse of New Zealand’s own overnight social media sensation, the man with now more Instagram followers than the population of the nation he currently represents, Tim Payne.
After that life-changing encounter, I recovered enough to head into the stadium and find my seat. That is when the heat of the moment, or rather the day, truly began to set in, as temperatures throughout the afternoon hung around an average of 33°C (91°F). While many around me had taken the necessary precautions, it turned out that I, the supposedly experienced Floridian, had neglected to put on even a little bit of sunscreen, resulting in my face turning several different shades of red over the course of the late afternoon.
For as rough as the conditions ultimately made the viewing experience, I had to imagine that the players running up and down the pitch must have been feeling the effects to an extent that made my own issues seem relatively insignificant.
That discomfort, however, was completely by design, as the England national team specifically chose to schedule its pre-World Cup friendlies in Florida in order to acclimate to the comparatively scorching nationwide temperatures and prepare for what the team hopes will be a long summer run.
While comparison is often the thief of joy, as the saying goes, I couldn’t help but notice that the fans on hand, unlike those at the non-stop party that was Haiti vs. New Zealand, tended to remain mostly quiet during the run of play. The occasional coordinated song still broke the silence here and there, along with the rise in expectant gasps upon each shot on net taken by the Three Lions. This was, in fairness, likely due to the knowledge that this, after all, was simply a friendly with practically non-existent stakes, as well as, as previously mentioned roughly one thousand times, the heat and humidity.
When they were engaged, however, the English supporters displayed their world-renowned, often hilarious, talent for football chants as captured by the following Instagram post from inside the designated travelling fans section. These fans at one point refused to participate in “the wave,” or as it is mainly known in England, due to its rise to prominence at the 1986 World Cup, the Mexican wave.
To give them credit, as an American sports fan, I don’t recall ever actually enjoying doing the wave. My own participation in it over the years has likely stemmed from a begrudging, obligatory acceptance or caving to a momentary sense of mass peer pressure rather than from any genuine sense of team spirit or fun.
That said, I stand in solidarity with the English in their outright rejection of the wave, and the backwards “up your bum” peace signs directed towards the coming movement by more than a few Brits added a great deal to the awkward comedy of the moment in the most appropriately British way possible.
After a fairly uneventful second half, the match wrapped up at one-nil, as fans dispersed to head to their cars, hotels, and local drinking establishments. I decided to post up at the always reliable Miller’s Ale House, as it was just a few minutes from where I had parked. There, I spoke to a few England supporters about their expectations for the coming tournament, with most putting the team’s absolute ceiling at the semifinals.
“We're thinking if we get to the semifinals, it's great for us, but I don't think we're going to win it,” said one fan from Camden in London. “I mean, the only way we're going to win it is if Harry Kane's firing on all seven (matches). His goals win games.”
Between the many English pundits I’ve listened to on the matter and the fans I’ve engaged with so far, I have yet to hear a single Brit predict a World Cup victory. This might seem shocking for a fanbase that carries such obvious passion and pride for its national team, but with a nod to their actual historical results in major international tournaments, you can hardly fault the English for being cautiously pessimistic.
I’ll be diving much deeper into that phenomenon in later posts, as the Three Lions have one more upcoming warm-up friendly on the ledger this Wednesday in Orlando. After that match, I plan to put together a larger, more in-depth piece based on my experiences with the English faithful in Florida, along with any overall consensus I can gather about their hopes and dreams for the coming month and a half.
So stay tuned, and thanks very much for the read! (P.S.: Don’t forget your sunscreen, friends.)