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Harry Kane stood among the hubbub outside the changing rooms at the Daugava Stadium. Kitmen walked past, dragging suitcases to the England bus. A Latvia player intercepted him to get a selfie. Journalists waited to talk to him about how it felt to have qualified for another World Cup finals.
And then suddenly, Kane was back in Qatar, back in the Al Bayt Stadium in the desert outside Doha one night in December 2022, acknowledging a trauma that will drive him on when he lines up for England’s first game at the tournament next summer.
Suddenly, the England captain was reliving his most recent World Cup memory, talking about his 84th minute penalty flying over the bar in the 2-1 quarter-final defeat to France. The images from that moment flooded over him. Kylian Mbappe laughing. Kane hiding his face in his jersey.
Kane has refused to let it damage him. Since then, he has smashed Wayne Rooney’s England goalscoring record – his two goals in the 5-0 defeat of Latvia on Tuesday night were his 75th and 76th in an England shirt – and won a Bundesliga title with Bayern Munich. He has scored 21 times in 13 matches for Bayern and England already this season.
But he admitted that the miss at Al Bayt changed him. Kane, 32, is famously dedicated anyway but it focussed him even more. It made him refine his penalty technique, it made him even more hungry, even more focussed. The pain of it has made him determined that it should never happen again, that he will make more World Cup memories to erase that miss.
‘I’m looking forward to the next World Cup to try and put that right,’ Kane said, ‘to try and go further, to try and lift the trophy as we all dream of doing.
Harry Kane has named his 2022 World Cup penalty miss as the worst moment of his career
The England captain blazed the ball over the bar in their semi-final against France in Qatar
‘And the opportunity is always there when the World Cup is coming around. I think those moments only shape you as a person, as a player and it’s definitely helped me to become a better player.
‘It’s been fuel for me. I’d say that moment at Al-Bayt was probably the worst that I felt in any moment. I’ve lost finals before but to have that responsibility fall on my shoulders and not being able to execute something that I’ve been to execute many a time in my career … I think that was the hardest part to process and take.
‘But as always as a sportsman, putting yourself in that situation, there are going to be moments where it doesn’t quite go your way. I think the way I learned from that was important, the way that motivated me to get even better and improve, not just from the penalty side in terms of improving my technique but as an all-round player.
‘I don’t think about it too much now. After another major tournament, you get over it and get on with it. I scored a penalty in the semi-final of the Euros last year, which was as high pressure as you are going to get.
‘I always try and learn from those moments. After that penalty at the 2022 World Cup, I went 31, I think, without missing. So I changed my technique a little bit, I improved in that sense, which I was proud of. And that’s always what I will try and do.’
Kane, who will turn 33 a week after the World Cup final next summer, made a speech to his teammates in the aftermath of their crushing victory here to emphasise to them that they must never take moments like qualifying for the biggest tournament in the game for granted.
The competition in the USA, Mexico and Canada will be Kane’s third World Cup. He won the Golden Boot in Russia 2018 but his ambition for more records and more goals and more winners’ medals burns just as brightly.
‘I am in the best form of my life at the moment,’ Kane said. ‘The goals are there and the numbers speak for themselves. The way I feel on the pitch, the way I am seeing the game, physically and without the ball, pressing, I feel in a really good place.
Now the 33-year-old is in the form of his life and hungry to erase those memories next summer
‘And I feel like I am still learning and that is down to the work we are doing at Bayern Munich as well as here with England. I always want to be improving and I feel like I have stepped up another level this season.
‘Can I get to 100 international goals? I think it’s there. The way I’m feeling right now, I’m not slowing down any time soon. I want to stay at this level for as long as I can. I’m on 76 now so that leaves 24 and we have a few more games between now and the World Cup and then try and edge closer to that 100.
‘I remember talking to Gareth Southgate a long time ago about some of the other big nations and how you’ve got to get to semi-finals, to finals, you’ve got to keep knocking on the door. It doesn’t just happen overnight. You’ve got to keep being in those situations and we’ve done that.
‘We know we’re just at the bottom of the mountain still. To win a World Cup is going to be incredibly hard. We’ll have to beat the biggest teams on the biggest stage and these moments, these feelings we’ve got together right now are important stepping stones to arriving in the summer and being fearless against anyone.’
