Harry Kane set his sights on going one step further in two years’ time by building on England’s World Cup performance to challenge for the 2020 European Championship, despite struggling to a 2-0 defeat in the third-place play-off against Belgium.
The England captain looks poised to win the Golden Boot in Russia after his closest challenger, Romelu Lukaku, failed to score on Saturday, with Thomas Meunier and Eden Hazard scoring the two goals that clinched Belgium’s best ever World Cup finish.
It means that France striker Kylian Mbappe must score a hat-trick in the World Cup final just to draw level with Kane’s tally of six goals, and should ensure that the Tottenham forward becomes England’s first Golden Boot winner since Gary Lineker at the 1986 World Cup.
But Kane admitted after the loss in St Petersburg, which confirmed England equal-best performance at the tournament since winning it in 1966, was not enough to meet both his appetite and expectation, and increased the hunger that he has to build on the campaign to challenge for top honours at Euro 2020.
Asked if he would have taken the Golden Boot and a fourth-place finish before the tournament, Kane said: “No, to be honest, because I said before we go into every competition to win, but we’ve made huge strides.
“That’s the aim, we don’t want to wait another 20-odd years to get to a semi-final or in big matches so this is the level we’ve got to try and stay at now. We’ve got to improve, we’ve got to get better but it’ll come. We go away now and rest up, but we’ll be back together before we know it.”
On winning the Golden Boot, should he be confirmed as doing so after Sunday’s final between France and Croatia, Kane added: “It shows we had a very good group stage, we scored a lot of goals but obviously I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get a goal in the last few games but that’s football. Sometimes it goes for you, sometimes it doesn’t. We’ll see tomorrow, and if I do it’ll be something I’m very proud of.”
Manager Gareth Southgate admitted that the third-place play-off against Belgium was “one match too far” for his side, but was eager to praise their overachievement in what was a first major tournament for him and many members of his young squad.
"We are competitive in every game. We've overcome a lot of landmarks that we needed to," Southgate said. "To finish in the top four is probably above where we are currently.
"Huge credit to the players because they deserve every bit of praise that they get when they go back. You look at the number of caps the Belgium players have and at the age of the squad; they're at their peak, this was really their big tournament.
"We're nowhere near our peak yet, we've know that right the way through."
Belgium were able to dominate the ball in the first-half, causing Southgate to introduce both Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford for Danny Rose and Marcus Rashford at half-time, and despite an upturn in performance after the break, England were still a level short of where Belgium were able to raise their performance.
This was none clearer than when they broke from almost their own by-line, and with a serious of one-touch passes quickly worked an opportunity for Meunier to volley at goal that needed an impressive save from Jordan Pickford to keep out. Hazard soon put the result beyond doubt, but having seen Belgium up close and personal twice during the tournament, Southgate admitted that they could easily have been in Sunday’s showcase match.
"I think they're a better side than us. The reality is we've had a day less to prepare and recover and I think it was just a game too far for us," he added.
"They are a top team and great credit to them, they'll probably be thinking they should have gone further than they did.
"From my point of view, our players have given absolutely everything right the way to the final whistle."
Kane agreed. “I thought the second half we played really well. We had them on the ropes for the first half-hour of that and we just couldn’t get a goal. We had one cleared off the line, but we put the pressure on obviously the second goal killed us. The lads couldn’t have given any more, it’s been a tough tournament, Belgium are obviously a good team, we didn’t play well first of all and conceded early but I can’t fault the lads, we gave it everything.
“It’s been tough, [we played]120 minutes four days ago but we wanted to play, we wanted to finish on a high so we’re disappointed we haven’t won the game but it shows that we can still learn, still get better. But we can hold our heads up high.
“We closed [the gap] for sure, but as today showed and some other games showed there’s still room for improvement and we’ve said that all along. We’re not the finished article yet, we’re still learning and we’re still getting better but with this group of lads I know they want to improve every time we’re together.”
