More at stake than third place as Kane, Lukaku contest Boot

Belgium and England meet in the play-off for third place in St Petersburg today with forwards Romelu Lukaku and Harry Kane vying for the Golden Boot.
Just as Belgium and England’s dead-rubber group game carried a sense of unimportance, so third-place play-offs can be sterile affairs, with both teams still coming down from having missed out on a place in the final.
But England’s Kane could still take the Golden Boot prize for tournament top scorer home from Russia after scoring six goals so far.
Belgium’s Lukaku has four goals, with French pair Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe, who play in tomorrow’s final, on three.
Both Kane and Lukaku were rested for that pedestrian final group game in Kaliningrad on June 28. It was dubbed the game “no one wanted to win,” with coaches Roberto Martinez and Gareth Southgate well aware the winning team would top Group G and set up a possible quarter-final meeting with Brazil.
Belgium won the match with a second-half goal from Adnan Januzaj.
Sure enough, after beating Japan in the last 16, they faced five-time tournament winners Brazil. They beat them 2-1 in Kazan only to then lose their semi-final 1-0 against France.
“I’d rather lose with this Belgium than win with that France,” said Eden Hazard of the semi-final defeat.
Team-mate Thibaut Courtois went further, telling Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: “France played anti-football.”
But the French are in tomorrow’s final and Belgium must contest third spot with England.
The England team made the most of avoiding Brazil in the quarter-finals by comfortably beating Sweden, having got past Colombia in the last 16.
But Croatia proved too much for them in Moscow on Wednesday in the second semi-final, so they miss out on what would have been their first-ever World Cup final outside of England.
They, like Belgium, would happily go home. All the goodbyes have been said, with coach Gareth Southgate going on to the pitch at the end of the 2-1 extra-time defeat to wave to supporters.
“We’ve come an incredibly long way in a short space of time. The whole thing is beyond where we thought we might go,” said Southgate.
There are now high hopes in England that the third-youngest squad at the finals can improve and come back stronger at Euro 2020. But the Belgium game must be played first.
“It’s not a game any team wants to play in,” Southgate said. “But we will want to give a performance of huge pride.”
The mood in Belgium is slightly less optimistic, with supporters wondering how many more chances their so-called golden generation will have to fulfil its potential and win an international trophy.
But coach Martinez is still upbeat. After defeat to France, he said: “We’ll come back to St Petersburg and fight for third place.
“Then we need to regroup again, we will look at the younger generations and try to become stronger from tournament to tournament. Belgian football has a wealth of young talent coming through. I have got my eyes on Euro 2020.”