"This one hurt, for sure. More than any other one," Harry Kane said when reflecting on England's World Cup run. He went a step further, saying the loss to Argentina hurt more than the penalty he missed against France in Qatar because of the way the semi-final unfolded. England lost 2-1 to Argentina in the 2026 World Cup semi-finals, and they reconvened 10 weeks later.
Kane's view of the Argentina loss
Kane's point is emotional, but it is not vague. He said: "I have been to the finals, to semi-finals and been so close." He then added: "I would probably say even more than when I missed a penalty in Qatar [in the quarter-final against France], just in the manner that it happened."
He also said: "It just felt like it wasn’t us as a team. It wasn’t the team that we wanted to be and said we’d be." That is the part worth sitting with. The complaint is not about one bad night in isolation, it is about England feeling unlike themselves when they were one step from the final.
Kane's club form has not dropped away in the meantime. He has scored 6 goals in his last 5 club matches, which is a decent reminder that the pain he is talking about is about England, not his own level.
England's reset before Spain
The wider message from Kane was that this is not a clean restart. He said: "The general messaging is that we continue what we've been building," and added, "I think it's a continuation, he’s been here for two years." Thomas Tuchel has pushed the squad to keep the summer disappointment from distracting them from progress, and Kane said the discussion around it will continue naturally over the next year.
England's immediate job is more concrete. They host Spain at Wembley Stadium on Saturday evening, with the squad already shaped by absences. Declan Rice withdrew ahead of Nations League games against Spain, Czechia and Croatia, while Cole Palmer was one of the five to drop out because of load management.
Rice has already played 346 Premier League minutes this season, while Palmer has logged 274. Those are not huge numbers on their own, but they do show why squad management has already crept into the conversation before Wembley.
Kane's reflection is the most revealing part of the week. He is not pretending the Argentina defeat was just another step in the cycle, and he is not asking anyone to forget it. England now have Spain in front of them, and the debate over that semi-final will run alongside the match at Wembley.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 3 outlets. How we work →
