If there's one clean, satisfying lesson to be taken from the World Cup action we've seen so far, it's this one: Big games tend to be decided by the big dogs.
Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, Michael Olise, Harry Kane—all of these guys have been playing out of their minds since the first group-stage games, and each has taken a deserved turn as the tournament's brightest star. Right now, minutes after England's 2-1 victory over DR Congo in the round of 32, it's Kane who reigns as the world's best and brightest.
DR Congo did everything an underdog is supposed to do in order to win a game like the one they just lost. They met England with more tenacity than the Three Lions may have been expecting, they defended like psychopaths, they scored early, and their attacks were dangerous enough to genuinely rattle the English players. After Brian Cipenga's opening goal in the seventh minute, DR Congo would hold onto a 1-0 lead for 68 minutes. Each minute that passed seemed to further fray the confidence of their opponents, as did a series of tremendous saves by Congolese keeper Lionel Mpasi.
When a controversial penalty no-call went against Kane and England, it started to feel like a specific type of result was taking shape. Sometimes soccer games produce a set of events—near misses, controversial referee decisions, a keeper turning into a colossus—that stack so completely on the side of the underdog that eventually there's nothing the superior team can do in order to turn the result in their favor. These are the losses, from the perspective of the favorite, that get labeled a "sickener."
England's nausea started to abate in the 68th minute, when Kane freed himself up in the box and capably headed a looping cross into the goal. The Three Lions were fully cured in the 86th minute, when Kane scored from the top of the box with a strike that should have been impossible to get on target given his body position and the contortions that were necessary to produce any power in his kick. There are capable strikers who start for good teams all over the world, many of them much younger and more limber than Kane, who could not reproduce Kane's goal on an empty field if given 10 attempts.
The question of how to win a soccer game has produced a million different answers. For the majority of the game, DR Congo had a particularly delicate one in their hands. And then England came along and provided a much more reliable solution: Give the ball to your best player and get the fuck out of the way.
