Harry Kane cut a confident figure on the eve of England’s entrance into Euro 2024, saying his team are in Germany “to win”.
The Three Lions open their campaign against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen tomorrow night looking to go one better than their penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy in the final three years ago.
Kane, who plays his club football in host country Germany for Bayern Munich, will captain the side and says the team is happy with being billed as one of the favourites.
He said: “Every tournament poses different expectations but we’ve earned the right to be classed as one of the favourites. But we look at ourselves individually and as a team and we know in part we’ve done a lot of things well and made the country proud in good tournaments.
“We’re here to win ultimately and there will be nothing better than to do that for the nation.
“There’s a lot of top teams and tomorrow night is our focus. We know how tough it was to get to the final last time and we’re going to have to do that and even more if we want to do that again. And hopefully one step further.”
Gelsenkirchen 🔜 pic.twitter.com/LpNVk0q4qY
— England (@England) June 15, 2024
All England’s players trained today, including left-back Luke Shaw, although he will start on the bench having recently returned from injury.
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England wary of Serbia
Serbia will pose a threat, particularly in attack through Dusan Vlahovic and Aleksandar Mitrovic with Dusan Tadic in behind.
Kane added: “Serbia have a lot of good qualities. Great attacking players who are known to be goalscorers for their clubs. We expect an aggressive team without the ball who defend really well.
“We’re expecting a tough game and if we don’t quite get it right we could be in for a tough night. We’ll focus on ourselves as we always do.”
England boss Gareth Southgate was also quick to highlight Serbia’s strength despite some mixed results in the warm-up games with wins over Cyprus and Sweden offset by defeats to Russia and Austria.
“Very tough. They have good individual players and a fantastic collective spirit,” Southgate said.
“We know this is a difficult opening game for us and we have to play at our very best to win the game.
“[Serbia coach] Dragan [Stojkovic] has different options, we know they can play in different systems and the strikers they have can cause problems to any team. They have a settled way of playing.
“We have to be able to deal with their strengths and try to exploit the weaknesses because every team in the tournament has weaknesses so that’s the role of our work during the week.”
Will England wear white?
Sky Bet are offering odds of 50/1, paid as free bets, to new customers if England wear their traditional white kit against Serbia.
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