Euros 2024: Harry Kane responds to Gary Lineker’s criticism of team

Transcript

00:00Dan and I are here in Erfurt, we've just come back from England's training camp,

00:04where Harry Kane's been talking today, addressing I suppose the criticism of England in the aftermath of that Denmark performance.

00:11First of all Dan, what did you make of the fact that we heard from Kane today,

00:14because quite often we don't hear from the captain until the sort of official match, the official press of the day before the match day.

00:20Yeah, I thought it was significant and probably a smart move from the FA to bring out Kane, the captain,

00:26the kind of elder statesman of this England team, to kind of pour a bit of water on the flames and calm everything down.

00:32And that was very much the tone Kane struck this afternoon.

00:36He was keen to point out that they were calm, he told fans to stick with the England team,

00:43to get behind them and judge them at the end of the tournament, which I thought was significant.

00:47So Kane very much unruffled, kind of on brand, and talking about using his experience from previous tournaments to draw on this time around,

00:58guiding younger players, that kind of thing. So yeah, I think kind of classic Kane and what you would expect from him really.

01:03And there was some particular discussion around Gary Lineker's comments.

01:07I mean, he was both critical of Kane individually, and then he had some choice words, or one particular choice word actually,

01:13for England's collective performance. How do you think Kane sort of addressed that?

01:17Yeah, I thought he addressed it really well, actually. He kind of had a dig at Gary Lineker,

01:22reminding him that he was part of an England team that didn't win anything,

01:26reminding him that he was once in their position, the players' position.

01:29Now he said, don't forget or remember what it was like to wear the shirt.

01:34And remember that England haven't won anything for a long, long time.

01:37And you were kind of part of that effectively and said, you know, there's better ways to go about this.

01:42So without kind of blowing everything up and really kind of hitting back at Lineker in strong terms,

01:47I think he gave him a bit of a dressing down, I think.

01:52So I was impressed with the way Kane handled that.

01:54And it sort of suggested that this has been a bit of a talking point in England camp over the last couple of days,

02:00which isn't a huge surprise.