Harry Kane says England's Nations League win over Croatia 'perfect way' to end 2018
Monday 19 November 2018 10:04, UK
Harry Kane says England's 2-1 Nations League win over Croatia was the "perfect way" to end 2018 with the national side.
The Tottenham striker's 85th-minute winner at Wembley was enough to send England through to the semi-finals of the inaugural Nations League Finals in Portugal next summer.
Victory over Zlatko Dalic's men - which came just 130 days after the World Cup semi-final defeat in Moscow - also followed an excellent 3-2 win in Spain, and Kane believes this is a great chance for Gareth Southgate's side to end England's trophy drought.
"It is definitely an opportunity for us," Kane said. "It's another semi-final, two games away from winning a trophy.
"So whoever we play will be a tough game when you look at the groups so we are going to have to beat another big nation, but we have proved we can do that - so we look forward to it."
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The win over Croatia saw Wembley come alive with chants of 'Football's Coming Home' ringing out around the ground, which gave an added element to the new international format.
Speaking on his thoughts about the Nations League, the 25-year-old said: "We are professionals. We want to win at everything we do, whether it is a new tournament or an old one we want to win.
"It is a chance to win a trophy in an England shirt, chance to make the fans proud and happy so we are going to try and do that next summer."
He added: "It has been a great year, for the country it has been fantastic. We had a great summer, after that we wanted to progress.
"We wanted to carry on being better and the only way to do that is if you beat the big teams like we have. It is a perfect way to finish the year, it's been a good run for me personally and a great one for the team overall.
"If we didn't win if would have still been a good year but it wouldn't have felt as good for sure.
"Of course we would have been thinking about this all the way until the March camp, it couldn't have gone any better to grind it out and come back from behind and turn it around as we did."
