England’s 4-0 win over Ukraine set up a semi-final match against Denmark on Wednesday at Wembley Stadium.
Harry Kane scored two goals when a strong England side advanced to the semi-finals of Euro 2020 with a 4-0 one-sided victory over Ukraine in Rome on Saturday.
Kane ended a worrying international goal-scoring drought by offsetting Germany’s 2-0 defeat on the final 16 of the midweek and put England ahead in four minutes on a sweaty night in the Italian capital.
Then, Gareth Southgate’s men left out this quarter-final tie with two more goals early in the second half, one from Harry Maguire before Kane scored again.
Substitute Jordan Henderson finished fourth and while Denmark is on the lookout for Wembley’s semi-final on Wednesday, England will have the confidence to reach the first European Championship final and even claim a first great international title since 1966.
The draw here was kind for them, with Ukraine surely a rival as weak as they could expect to face in the quarter-finals, a stage in which they have lost against the Italians and Portugal in the last European Championships.
Still, the stats are impressive, as England have won five games in this tournament, all without conceding a goal.
Some of his games in wide areas were excellent, with Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho making their first outing to the Euro, too hot for Ukraine.
Kane, his captain, had spent nearly eight hours without finding the net for his country, but his opener was his second in just eight minutes after the late strike that secured victory over Germany.
Regardless of the opposition, their display at the Olympic Stadium meant an increase in class in the last third of the pre-Euro matches and they will be favorites at home against a Danish team that played their own quarterfinals. final against the Czech Republic. on Saturday in distant Baku.
Header hat-trick
This will be the only match England will play away from home in the competition and made a big difference in the defeat of the Germans, who were followed by more than 40,000 fans at Wembley, where coronavirus restrictions were reduced.
With Italy currently imposing a forty-five day period on all UK arrivals, the number of England fans in Rome was limited to those already based in the European Union, although they were still felt between the crowd of less than 12,000.
They had a lot to celebrate, unlike their Ukrainian counterparts, as Andriy Shevchenko’s team fell short in their bid to lead the country to the first semifinal of the most important tournament in history.
They withdrew from their group and ended up with ten men’s Sweden in overtime in the round of 16, and their chances of hitting England looked dead and buried when they fell behind.
Sterling, who terrified the Ukrainian defense from the left, played Kane who passed the ball in front of Georgiy Bushchan.
Ukrainian giant striker Roman Yaremchuk forced a save from Jordan Pickford and Bushchan kept a Declan Rice battery runner, looking comfortable in England.
However, Ukraine was a different proposition after injured defender Serhiy Kryvtsov was replaced by Dynamo Kiev winger Viktor Tsygankov in the 36th minute.
They finished the first half strong and England’s most pessimistic fans could have spent the interval reliving their exit from Euro 2016, when they lost to Iceland in the round of 16 despite opening the scoring in the fourth minute.
No need to worry.
England scored again less than a minute after the restart when a foul on Kane allowed Luke Shaw to throw a free kick from the left for Maguire to head in.
Four minutes later, Sterling supplied Shaw’s overlap and crossed for a rejuvenated Kane to return home.
The Tottenham star almost got his hat-trick, a volley sting that produced a good stop by Bushchan.
From the resulting corner of Mason Mount came the fourth goal, another header, this time from Henderson, the first of five substitutes sent by Southgate who would have been thinking about the semi-final long before the end of this quarter-final.