sport news Harry Kane on England's World Cup ambitions and why he never gave up hope at ... trends now
It is fairly late into the evening and the interview has run over time, but Harry Kane shows no sign of impatience. Speaking to The Mail on Sunday from a quiet corner at St George's Park, the England captain has been asked about the mental toll of playing almost all year round, and will admit that it is not always as easy as he would make it appear.
'It's tough, for sure,' he says. 'Physically I feel like I'm in a really good place but, mentally, you go through ups and downs. The pressure of every game that comes along wears you down a little.
'But we're pretty used to it. It's probably been three or four weeks' holiday for the last 10 years or so. It's just something you have to deal with. The important thing is trying to take time as much as you can just to recharge, with the family, with friends. That's what I do and I feel like I end up in a pretty good place.'
Harry Kane has insisted that England can win the World Cup and delved into their success
The issue of player workload is especially pertinent after two seasons in which senior players shouldered a Covid-induced fixture backlog and ahead of a campaign that includes a winter World Cup.
Asked to turn his thoughts to Qatar 2022, he identifies the national side's ability to handle the pressure that comes with near-favouritism as crucial to their prospects. It strikes a very different tone from his first press conference as England captain, in the early summer of 2018, when Kane sought to consign the burden of previous teams' disappointments to the past.
'When I think back, it's funny, before then we had no real expectation,' he says, chatting over Zoom two days before the fixture against Italy. 'We hadn't done well in tournaments for a long time. But I felt like it was right to have the mindset that we need to go and try to win it. Every team in any competition has the mindset of trying to win and we should be no different.
The striker believes the Three Lions will have to handle the pressure of near-favourites in Qatar
'I think now this is a little different. We've been to a semi-final. We've been to a final. We will probably be going into this tournament as one of the favourites and that comes with a different pressure, a different responsibility.'
Gareth Southgate's England might not quite have brought football home yet, but they corrected some historical shortcomings in reaching the World Cup last four and Euro 2020 final.
The team beat Germany in major knockout tie for the first time since 1966, ended a 22-year wait to win a penalty shootout in a major tournament and became the first England side to reach a final since Sir Alf Ramsey's men.
'We've been knocking down hurdles over the last four years,' says Kane. 'We've been creating our own history. I'm really confident in the group. We've still got stuff to improve on and we've got stuff we can be better at. But, overall, the team's in a good place.
England captain Kane scored the equaliser from the spot against Germany but was due a rest
'We played the whole of Euro 2020 and didn't lose a game and it was just that the penalty shootout didn't go our way. It shows we can handle ourselves at that pressure. But at the World Cup you're playing at the next step up and in a different environment, being in Qatar. There is stuff we need to go and break down to be world champions. And that is our goal.'
Kane's representatives suggested this interview to promote a new exhibition dedicated to him at the Museum of London.
Entitled 'Harry Kane: I Want To Play Football', the organisers drew its name from a scrawled message he wrote as a five-year-old and charts his football life from child to man, with family photos, other personal items and his myriad accolades.
Designed to inspire young people to stick to their dreams, it highlights obstacles Kane overcame to become his country's pre-eminent player, from rejection by Arsenal as an eight-year-old to the four loan spells he was sent on with mixed success, and comical misappraisals as a one-season wonder.
Kane's exhibition 'I want to play football' (pictured above) runs until December 2022 in London
There were also periods of uncertainty during his progress through the Tottenham academy, which his former coach Bradley Allen recalls when asked about a pivotal meeting with the teenage Kane and his father Pat.
'I can still remember a chat at the end of his under-14 year,' Allen tells the MoS. 'I was sitting alongside [academy manager] John McDermott, with Pat and Harry there at the office at our former training ground.
'They were, I think, a bit nervous. Were we going to keep him for another two years? We were suggesting some stuff that we felt he needed to do more work on, his fitness and his running capacity. We felt there needed to be technical development.'
They wanted to retain him. 'Pat looked across to Harry and just said, "Well, you know, there you go, son, you know the coaches fully believe in you, you know what you've got to do, it's over to you".'
Some of the superstar's memorabilia from across his storied career is included in the museum
McDermott has in the past been more forthright in his appraisal of Kane's potential at that time, reportedly describing him as 'the runt of the litter' whose physical metrics were significantly down on his team-mates'.
With Pat standing 6ft 4in, however, the coaches were hopeful that his son was due a growth spurt and had noted both how sweetly their prospect struck the ball as well as the early signs of an inner steel.
Kane himself identifies the latter
