There was a certain inevitability about Harry Kane breaking England’s goalscoring record with a penalty in Thursday night’s thrilling qualifying win over Italy here in Naples, helping to further banish the demons from his missed spot-kick in Qatar.
Kane has always lived for these moments, the opportunities to right wrongs, set the record straight and make history.
He has inevitably taken some flak since the World Cup quarter-final defeat to France -- Wolves fans taunted him with chants of ‘You missed when it mattered’ in Tottenham’s recent game at Molineux -- but Kane now stands alone as England’s greatest-ever goalscorer, ahead of Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker, Jimmy Greaves and Michael Owen.
There will always be quibbles. A third of Kane’s England goals, 18 of 54, have been penalties, reflecting something about the modern game.
It came after Giovanni Di Lorenzo handled the ball, taking it away from Kane just before half-time.
The Spurs forward has said the memory of his costly miss in Al Bayt Stadium, ballooned over the bar from 12 yards, will never leave him, and it must have flashed through his mind before he sent Gianluigi Donnarumma the wrong way with a typically composed finish.
There is no reason penalties should not count the same but, for the pedants and purists, Kane and Rooney are now tied on 31 competitive, non-penalty goals for their country.
Kane will probably be clear by Sunday, after England have faced Ukraine at Wembley, or by the start of the summer when they travel to Malta and host North Macedonia at home in their next round of European Championship qualifiers.
Kane, of course, has reached his milestone in just 81 caps, while it took Rooney 120 to score one goal fewer, and his goals-to-game ratio is bettered only by the great Greaves and Vivian Woodward, who made his England debut in 1903.
Kane has also scored just six times in friendlies to Rooney’s 16 (partly a consequence of the advent of the Nations League) and is England’s top-scorer in major tournaments with 12.
As Declan Rice, who opened the scoring after Kane’s shot was blocked, pointed out, it is hard to set a limit for the 29-year-old, who has targeted playing into his late 30s and will be aiming to establish a record that will feel impossible to break.
"I’m feeling fit and I’m feeling strong," said Kane. "I’m feeling probably the best I’ve felt in my career so far. So I hope I have many more years. Playing for England is probably my greatest feeling in football and I want to do it for as long as possible."
It would have been understandable if Kane had needed time to recover from the pain of Qatar, if he had struggled to get his body and mind back up to speed after mid-season heartbreak.
Instead, it has only seemed to push him on again. He scored for Tottenham in the first game back after the finals, their 2-2 draw with Brentford on Boxing Day, and has found the net times 10 times for his club since to restart to take him beyond Greaves as Spurs’ all-time top-scorer and past 200 goals in the Premier League.
Quite an achievement in the space of less than seven weeks, even for Kane, who is so used to setting personal milestones.
Doggedly, some doubters will remain until Kane wins something with team, even if it has long been obvious that he is an elite player by every possible metric, simply playing in sides who have either lacked the breaks or downright failed to do him justice.
As they began a new cycle with a first win in Italy since 1961, England certainly looked like a side capable of finally winning a major trophy under Gareth Southgate after a performance which showcased the two sides to their game.
Roberto Mancini, the Italy coach, had described the fixture as a new ‘Clasico’ given the number of engaging meetings between the sides in recent years, and the match lived up to its billing as England produced their best 45 minutes under Southgate, only to be pegged back by the hosts in the second half.
Kane was the beating heart of everything for England, linking the play on the half-turn magnificently in the first half, as Rice and Jude Bellingham overpowered Italy in a display of midfield dominance which felt almost unprecedented.
Jack Grealish should have killed the game before the interval, shanking a simple finish wide after Kane wriggled away from his markers and crossed.
Mateo Retegui, the Argentina-born debutant who surely has a bright future in the European game, pulled one back for Italy and England had to show their grit, particularly after Luke Shaw was shown two yellow cards in quick succession with ten minutes still to play.
Kane was again the standard bearer for the other side of England’s game, holding up the ball superbly in the dying minutes to close out an historic win for himself and the country.
