With Jermain Defoe’s dream Major League Soccer debut for Toronto FC behind him, the clinical striker still has one huge aim on his mind: get into England’s World Cup squad.
Defoe, 31, scored twice on his TFC debut in a 2-1 away win away at Seattle over the weekend, but the former Tottenham Hotspur striker is still seen as having an outside chance of making England’s 23-man squad for the World Cup in Brazil.
Speaking to the English FA’s website, Defoe is keen to do all he can to get on the plane to Brazil. That means playing well and scoring goals for Toronto in MLS.
“I just need to play and score goals,” said Defoe. “To get in a World Cup squad you have to be playing. Throughout my career, people know I’ve scored a lot of goals. I think the most important thing for me is to play and score goals. I think that’s all I can do.”
(MORE: Defoe scores two goals in his first 24 Major League Soccer minutes)
And Defoe is very, very good at doing just that. Ask the Seattle Sounders defense, they found out about Defoe’s supreme poaching ability first hand on Saturday. But with MLS still looked down on by the upper echelons of English soccer and elsewhere in the world, will scoring a shed load of goals in North America be enough to get Defoe in Roy Hodgson’s squad? It should.
Being sharp, scoring goals and playing well for Toronto should definitely get Defoe in the initial 30-man squad for the Three Lions, and then the real challenge begins for the London born striker. Defoe’s competition is Wayne Rooney, Daniel Sturridge (both dead certs) and then a group of four strikers which include Danny Welbeck, Rickie Lambert, Andy Carroll and Jay Rodriguez.
Defoe has World Cup pedigree, something Welbeck, Lambert, Carroll and Rodriguez don’t possess as Hodgson will likely take a maximum of five strikers to Brazil. TFC’s leading striker scored the winning goal for England against Slovenia in the 201o World Cup, which put the Three Lions into the last 16 in South Africa.
Can Defoe make it? Only time will tell. But the fact that he’s so fired up to get to Brazil can only be a good thing for Toronto, as Defoe’s double against Seattle in their season opener is just the start of things to come.
