Harry Kane has said that England will use their penalty heart grief in Euro 2020 as motivation for the World Cup 2022.
The Three Lions were heartbreakingly defeated in a shootout against Italy after the score was 1-1 after extra time. Luke Shaw got England off to a perfect start and reached the fastest goal in European Championship final history before Leonardo Bonucci leveled things off in the second half of normal time.
? You made your nation proud, @HKane. pic.twitter.com/h6XD89HaBd
– Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) July 11, 2021
In the shootout, Kane converted but Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford all failed to give Italy a famous victory.
Speaking to the BBC after the match, the England captain said that the players left everything on the pitch.
“The boys could not have given more. Of course, penalties are the worst thing in the world when you lose and it was not our night,” he said.
“We’ve had a fantastic tournament, we should be proud, keep our heads high. It will hurt now, it will hurt for a while. We are on the right track and we are building. Hopefully we can make progress from next year.”
He added: “We should be extremely proud of ourselves as a group for what we have achieved. It will probably hurt for the rest of our career but it is football. We have come well from Russia and now it is about continuing We have a large group of young players who are hungry for more football like this. “
Kane played well / John Sibley – Pool / Getty Images
Kane also acknowledged that England may have been too conservative after taking the early goal.
“We played against a very good side. We got a perfect start, maybe lost a little too deep sometimes,” he said.
“Sometimes when you do it so early it’s easy to try to take the pressure off. It’s probably what happened that had plenty of the ball and possession, but to be fair we saw the control, they did not create many chances. Obviously they got their breakthrough from the game of death. “
