Jermain Defoe shows he can still cut it for England – despite his advancing years

JERMAIN DEFOE has been around so long, he played 45 minutes of international football as a team-mate of Gareth Southgate.

Defoe’s England debut in a friendly against Sweden in March 2004 coincided with Southgate’s 57th and final cap.

Thirteen years later and here they were again. Southgate in his first competitive match in permanent charge — and a team who had seemed so well blessed for strikers heading into Euro 2016 now suddenly bereft.

Defoe scored, of course. It almost goes without saying.

It is what he has always done and he is unfortunate to have been around during an era in which the out-and-out poacher has become unfashionable.

If this turns out to be nothing more than a pleasing footnote to Defoe’s international career then he could be the subject of a decent trivia question — who scored his final England goal 3½ years after his penultimate cap?

At the age of 34 years and five months, Defoe became England’s sixth oldest scorer — and he is in good company after Sir Stanley Matthews, Sir Tom Finney, Teddy Sheringham, Frank Lampard and Jack Charlton.

But there is no reason why this should necessarily be Defoe’s final cap. Even when Harry Kane is fit, no manager would complain at having such a proven snaffler on the bench.

It is not as if Southgate is falling over top-notch goalscorers.

Defoe is the second-highest Englishman in the Premier League Golden Boot standings — despite playing for the worst team in the top flight.

And he is the only Englishman to have scored a winning goal at a World Cup finals in the last decade.
Here, Defoe needed just two opportunities to sniff out his 20th international goal.

Within the space of a minute, he latched on to Adam Lallana’s smart reverse pass and forced Ernestas Setkus to save with his legs.

Then he drilled home from a Raheem Sterling centre in a Lithuanian penalty area which so often resembled a sardine can.

Defoe had marched on to the pitch with Bradley Lowery, the terminally ill five-year-old Sunderland fan with whom he has forged a deep bond.

And after making way for Jamie Vardy early in the second half, he was afforded the official man-of- the-match award.