It is a truth universally acknowledged by every patriotic English man, woman, and child, that football’s coming home. And forget grassroots support or a new management regime – the true key to England’s World Cup 2018 success (or lack of abject failure, if you prefer) is Fortnite.
Ok, that might be a slight reach, but the team’s captain, Harry Kane, says that Epic’s battle royale is as important part of the squad’s downtime. In an interview with the BBC’s Gabby Logan, Kane said that “playing Fortnite” was what he and the team did when they’re not worrying about scoring goals.
Not many of the games on our list of the best battle royale games have the backing of international sports stars.
In the interview (via Gamesradar – you can watch highlights of the match it appeared in here) Kane continued “as silly as it sounds, playing Fortnite passes the time quite well. There are quite a few of us playing a few games of that.” Kane, who is currently topping the goal-scoring tables at the tournament, says that he’s “probably” playing more Fortnite at the tournament than he does when he’s playing football at home in England.
The battle royale’s popularity among the England team is well documented. After scoring against Panama during the group stages of the tournament, Jesse Lingard performed the popular ‘Shoot’ dance, which appears as a dance in the game. Kane’s Tottenham and England teammate, Dele Alli, has regularly performed similar dances after scoring goals in the Premier League.
Back in May, Kane, Alli, and another Tottenham and England player, Kieran Trippier, all played alongside Fortnite personality Ninja in a selection of squad games. England play Colombia later today, in their first knockout game of the tournament. Even if they don’t win, perhaps Kane can console himself with some Victory Royales.