Harry Kane admitted he “would love to have played better” in the Euro 2024 final, which England lost 2-1 to Spain on Sunday night.
The Three Lions became the first team in Euros history to lose two consecutive finals, with Mikel Oyarzabal’s 86th-minute winner securing a record fourth title for Spain.
Kane finished the tournament as the Golden Boot’s joint winner on three goals but was criticised by pundits for much of the tournament for a perceived lack of match sharpness.
He had come into the tournament nursing a lower back injury, for which he had needed pain-killing injections in order to play for Bayern Munich towards the end of the campaign.
Kane was asked whether that back injury had impacted him at Euro 2024, but refused to discuss his situation. The England captain told BBC Radio 5 Live after the final: “No, it’s not time to talk about personal things.
“The tournament plays out in different situations. You deal with a lot as a player throughout these tournaments. Everyone is dealing with issues and you’re at your maximum physical capabilities. It was just the way the game panned out today and the way the tournament’s gone.
“Of course, from a personal point of view, I would have loved to have played better tonight and it would’ve been a different outcome, but unfortunately it wasn’t.”
Gareth Southgate’s first substitution in the final was to replace Kane on 61 minutes with Ollie Watkins, whose heroic substitute goal from the bench in the 90th miunute of the semi-final against the Netherlands took England to the final.
“I think Harry has come into the tournament having had an injury at the end of the season,” Southgate said. “He’s played a lot of minutes, we’ve tried to manage those minutes as well as we could.
“We just felt we needed to get more pressure on their centre-backs and have an option of a runner in behind which is why we put Ollie [Watkins] on when we did.
In a separate interview, Southgate told ITV: “Physically it has been tough for him. He came into the tournament short on games and has not quite reached the level we all would have hoped.”
