Harry Kane wants to “shine a light” on human rights concerns surrounding the Qatar World Cup.
Kane revealed he plans to talk to Tottenham team mates Hugo Lloris and Heung-Min Son - who are also national team captains of France and South Korea respectively - to send out a strong message ahead of the tournament. Gareth Southgate led a 30 minute meeting at St George’s Park to discuss with the squad about concerns over migrant workers’ rights and the England boss has also said it is “horrible” that LGBT fans will not feel comfortable because homosexuality is illegal in the Gulf state.
Three Lions captain Kane said: “There are a couple of other national team captains at Tottenham and maybe talking to other national captains to see if we can be unified with what we can do and how we approach it. I think it’s really important. As a nation we want our fans to enjoy the tournament as much as we hopefully enjoy the tournament. And we want them to feel safe and free to watch the games how they please and act how they want to act.
“It’s really important that discussions are being had and hopefully progress is being made because football is for all, football is for everyone and a World Cup is a great opportunity to show that. There’s no bigger stage and Qatar will be on that big stage and the light will be shone on them. We want to be coming away after that World Cup with everyone having a really amazing experience.
“I think any issues that we’re trying to resolve are to resolve forever, it’s not just a quick fix. Like I touched on, the fact there’s a light shining on the situation will help us talk about it, we’re having these conversations now and that’s definitely now.
"It’s important those conversations carry on. It’s similar to taking the knee which wasn’t something we decided to do for a set amount of time, we want to continue that conversation, keep showing our support and that’s been really important.
“So I guess that’s the same thing which will happen in Qatar and after the tournament it will be important to keep talking about those issues and anything we do to help to improve is for the rest of time and not just for a few months.”
