Harry Kane’s perfect hat-trick caps ‘incredible’ England performance

Kane scored a perfect first-half hat-trick with his head, left and right foot as England ran out 5-0 winners against Albania in front of 80,366 supporters at Wembley.

Harry Maguire opened the scoring with a ninth-minute header taking the Sheffielder to six England goals, equal with John Terry and Leeds United great Jack Charlton as his country’s most prolific centre-back.

But it was Kane’s pursuit of Wayne Rooney’s goalscoring record which took centre stage, taking his tally to 44, nine adrift.

“Whenever you put on an England shirt you want to do everyone proud – your friends and family, the fans – and we may have had a little point to prove after the last game,” he said. “We didn’t perform to the standards that we know we can.

“It was an incredible performance. The pressure was on a little bit and we needed to get the result. I can’t credit the lads enough.”

Jordan Henderson scored the other goal, all five coming before half-time against hapless visitors who lost two players to injury within 20 minutes. Poland won 4-1 in Austria to take their slim hopes of topping the qualifying group into the final round of games.

Only the top team goes through automatically, with second place going into a play-off.