With a gamble in Greece, England recovers without Harry Kane for 3-0 win

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — This time, Lee Carsley’s gamble paid off.

In a surprise move, England's interim coach left captain Harry Kane on the bench for the Nations League match against Greece on Thursday and the youthful team eased to a 3-0 win in Athens.

It was a far cry from a month ago when Carsley boldly picked a team featuring no recognized strikers — Kane was injured on that occasion — and full of midfielders, only for England to lose 2-1 to Greece at Wembley Stadium.

Carsley’s brief tenure with England as a caretaker coach after the departure of Gareth Southgate has been under a cloud of scrutiny since that first ever defeat to Greece. Yet he'll hand the reins to Thomas Tuchel at the end of the year with his reputation somewhat restored and the future suddenly looking more positive for the national team.

Indeed, looking to the future is the reason he chose Ollie Watkins over Kane for this match.

“This team needs to try and create leaders and one way to do that is give them opportunities,” he said of the decision to pick Watkins in a team that also included a debut for Liverpool midfielder Curtis Jones.

Watkins led England’s forward-leaning formation, justifying the selection with a goal in the seventh minute when he tapped in a cross from 22-year-old winger Noni Madueke — another unexpected starter.

Jude Bellingham had a hand in the second goal in the 78th, sending in a shot that hit the post before the ball deflected off Greece goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos and into the net. Jones flicked the ball in for 3-0 five minutes later.

“There were a lot of positives,” Carsley said. “I see the quality the players have got and you’re now seeing what they are capable of. ... When you see the team, you might have thought it was a gamble — you know, a risk — but I’ve got real confidence in these players.”

Kane came on for Watkins in the 66th minute and Carsley said he expected the captain to start on Sunday when England hosts Ireland, seeking a win to finish top of the group and secure promotion back to the top tier of the Nations League.

“He was absolutely fine," Carsley said. “I think it’d be fair to say he wants to play every game like all top players do. I think he understands it's important that other players experience that kind of experience we had tonight. He's a great example to the rest of the players.

“It was brilliant for Ollie to get a goal,” Carsley added. “It's important that if we’re going to put these players in a position where we are going to win the World Cup, these players need as many experiences as they can. It was no slight on Harry.”

The Greeks went scoreless despite convincing spells in attack, with coach Ivan Jovanovic conceding that England had found its form to halt a run of four successive wins for his team.

“England is a better team for sure, they have higher quality, but the result could have been different,” Jovanovic said. “I have no complaints with the effort the players put in, their runs and their challenges, but we were a notch behind them. England was very good, very good, and we were below the level we can play at.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

England's Ollie Watkins, center, celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the UEFA Nations League Group F soccer match between Greece and England at Olympic Stadium in Athens, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

England's Ollie Watkins, right, controls the ball during the UEFA Nations League Group F soccer match between Greece and England at Olympic Stadium in Athens, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

England's manager Lee Carsley reacts during the UEFA Nations League Group F soccer match between Greece and England at Olympic Stadium in Athens, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

England's Curtis Jones, left, shakes hands as celebrates with his teammate Morgan Gibbs-White, after scoring the third goal against Greece during the UEFA Nations League Group F soccer match between Greece and England at Olympic Stadium in Athens, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

England's Harry Kane, left, and Dimitris Giannoulis of Greece, right, fight for the ball during the UEFA Nations League Group F soccer match between Greece and England at Olympic Stadium in Athens, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

NEW YORK (AP) — When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.

“Who are these people? What is a saint?” Scorsese recalls. “The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don’t see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?”

For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media.

The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Matti Leshem and Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year.

In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, “The Saints” emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz.

Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind.

Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

SCORSESE: I go back to my early childhood and respite and the sanctuary I found in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. Not being able to play sports or be a tough guy in the streets. And, you know, the streets were pretty tough down there. I found a sanctuary in that place. It's now a basilica. The first Catholic Cathedral in New York in 1810, 1812. It figures in “Gangs of New York.” The Know Nothings and anti-immigration groups attacked it in 1844. Archbishop Hughes fought back. It’s a place rife with history. In this contemplation, I was curious about these figures, these statues, and what they represented. They had stories.

SCORSESE: It took time to think about that and to learn that, no, the point is that they are human. For me, if they were able to do that, it’s a good example for us. If you take it and put it in a tough world — if you’re in a world of business or Hollywood or politics or whatever — if you’re grounded in something which is a real, acting out of compassion and love, this is something that has to be admired and emulated. They make mistakes. I found that by over-appreciating that person, it almost takes you off the hook. “At least there’s someone doing it.” Well, what about you? Dorothy Day was quite something but she knew: Don’t put that label on me because it gets everyone off the hook.

SCORSESE: I’ve been wanting to do this for years. I tried doing this back in 1980 with RAI Television in Rome. Then it fell apart and I put the energies into “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Kundun,” “Silence” — the ones that were obviously in that realm of what you may call spirituality.

Here, they came by and it was actually going to happen. I said, “Yeah, I’ll go with this.” They said, “This is the outlet.” I said, “Alright, as long as we have the freedom to express what we want.” They went with the scripts. They went with the shoot. They went with the cuts. Now what I think is: Do we take these thoughts or expressions and only express them to people who agree with us? It’s not going to do us any good. I’m talking about keeping an open mind.

Shooting in Manhattan and shooting in Oklahoma (where “Killers of the Flower Moon” was filmed) are two different things. Being around people on a farm that is one-tenth bigger than the size of Manhattan is very different than being on 63rd Street. You begin to see the world from how they perceive it. Just to understand what daylight and nighttime means in rural areas. That was a revelatory experience being out there for that long.

SCORSESE: The filmmaking comes from God. It comes from a gift. And that gift is also involved with an energy or a need to tell stories. As a storyteller, somehow there’s a grace that’s been given to me that’s made me obsessive about that. The grace has been through me having that ability but also to fight over the years to create these films. Because each one is a fight. Sometimes you trip, you fall, you hit the canvas, can’t get up. You crawl over bleeding and knocked around. They throw some water on you and somehow you make it through. You go to another. Then you go to another. This is grace, it really is.

For me, it’s not that cinema is a god. It’s the expression of God. Creativity is the expression of God. Something happens in you when it clicks, when it works. Not everybody thinks it works, but maybe you do. But something happens and there’s no way of expressing that, except that it’s a gift. For me, it’s a gift to experience and existing for that moment. So it comes through cinema. It comes through movies. Even a commercial because commercials are not easy. You have to tell a story in less than 45 seconds. My last picture was three hours, 15 minutes. (Laughs) Come on!

SCORSESE: It’s an option but I’m still working on it. There’s a very strong possibility of me doing a film version of Marilynne Robinson’s “Home,” but that’s a scheduling issue. There’s also a possibility of me going back and dealing with the stories from my mother and father from the past and how they grew up. Stories about immigrants which tied into my trip to Sicily. Right now, there’s been a long period after “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Even though I don’t like getting up early, I’d like to shoot a movie right now. Time is going. I’ll be 82. Gotta go.

SCORSESE: You’re guided by: Is it worth doing at this late stage in your life? Can you make it through? Is it worth your time? Because now, the most valuable thing aside from people I love, my family, is time. That’s all there is.

SCORSESE: Some older ones I’ve been watching. There was one film I liked a great deal I saw two weeks ago called “I Saw the TV Glow.” It really was emotionally and psychologically powerful and very moving. It builds on you, in a way. I didn’t know who made it. It’s this Jane Schoenbrun.

People should see “A Face in the Crowd” over and over again. I think that’d be important.

SCORSESE: Well, of course I have strong feelings. I think you can tell from my work, what I’ve said over the years. I think it’s a great sadness, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity. A real opportunity to make changes ultimately, maybe, in the future, never to despair, and to understand the needs of other people, too. Deep introspection is needed at this point. Action? I’m not a politician. I’d be the worst you could imagine. I wouldn’t know what actions to take except to continue with dialogue and, somehow, compassion with each other. This is what it’s about.

This image released by Fox Nation shows Liah O'Prey as Joan of Arc, center, in a scene from "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," a new docudrama series by Martin Scorsese. (Slobodan Pikula/Fox Nation via AP)

This image released by Fox Nation shows Liah O'Prey as Joan of Arc, center, in a scene from "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," a new docudrama series by Martin Scorsese. (Slobodan Pikula/Fox Nation via AP)

FILE - Martin Scorsese appears the National Board of Review awards gala in New York on Jan. 11, 2024. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)