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Kane is consoled by Phil Jones at full-time. Matthias Hangst
dream over

'We're gutted. It hurts, it hurts a lot and it's going to hurt for a while'

Harry Kane was left distraught as England bowed out of the World Cup at the semi-final stage.

ENGLAND CAPTAIN HARRY Kane could not hide his desperate disappointment after his side’s 2-1 extra-time defeat against Croatia in the semi-finals of the World Cup in Moscow.

“We’re gutted. It hurts, it hurts a lot,” Kane said after the match at the Luzhniki Stadium.

“It’s going to hurt for a while of course. We can hold our heads up high. It’s been a fantastic journey, we got further than anyone else thought we would have,” he added.

Playing in their first World Cup semi-final since 1990, England took a fifth-minute lead through Kieran Trippier’s superb free-kick.

But Croatia summoned the strength to come back in the second half, equalising through Ivan Perisic before Mario Mandzukic got the winner in the 109th minute.

“We thought we were just good enough, we thought we could have done that. But we’ve fallen just a bit short. It hurts. I don’t know what else to say,” Kane added.

“The fans were amazing. It was a tough game, a 50-50 game. I’m sure there was stuff we could have done better, but we worked as hard as we could.

England v Croatia: Semi Final - 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Getty Images Getty Images

“It hurts, it’ll hurt for a while, but we can hold our heads up high. It was a fantastic journey, we got further than anyone thought we could, we’ve just got to learn from it.

“We created some good chances, being 1-0 up. Maybe we dropped too deep at times. In big games, it’s small margins. There’s a lot we could have done better, but they played well.

“It’s been great to get to this stage, but we wanted to go on and win it. But we’ve fallen a bit short. It just hurts. It shows we can win knockout games; the next stage is to go one further. We’ve got to dust ourselves down and go again in a couple of years.”

© – AFP 2018

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