England manager Gareth Southgate has admitted that Harry Kane fell short of his ideal physical level at Euro 2024, with the Three Lions left unable to hide from fitness issues at the tournament.
A back injury ruled Kane out of Bayern Munich’s final two games of the club season and the England captain, despite scoring three times, never looked his usual self over the past four weeks.
Luke Shaw was also selected as the squad’s only recognised left-back, even having not played at club level for several months because a hamstring problem. He missed the entire group stage and was only eventually fit enough to start the final after two substitute appearances.
Elsewhere, Harry Maguire was cut from the provisional squad due to injury, while Jordan Henderson suffered from a muscle problem in March and April and never made the list in the first place. The pair of senior leaders have 144 senior caps between them.
“Physically, it’s been a tough period for Harry. He came in short of games and didn’t quite get up to the level we’d all hope,” Southgate told the BBC cameras post-match, explaining his withdrawal of Kane only an hour into the final.
“We felt Ollie [Watkin]’s freshness would allow us to press a bit better and offer us a threat in behind. I thought they both did what we wanted.”
The England boss similarly told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I think Harry has come into the tournament having had an injury at the end of the season. He’s played a lot of minutes, we’ve tried to manage those minutes as well as we could.
“He’s led the team incredibly well. We’ve lost a lot of leadership from the group with injuries to Henderson and Maguire, so a lot has fallen on Harry’s shoulders, he’s done that exceptionally well.”
On the subject of Shaw and the fitness problems in general, Southgate said to ITV after the final whistle: “There’s no hiding we’ve had some issues coming into the tournament, we’ve managed to deal with most of them and got Luke out tonight, but we’ve just fallen short in the end.”
He elaborated in his post-match press conference: “So many of our players came into the camp having missed the end of the season, we’ve managed to get Luke through 90 minutes when he hasn’t played for four months. We’ve had Kobbie [Mainoo] as a young player who’s done incredibly well, but the amount of football he’s had this year… Jude [Bellingham], we were about to take off because he was cramping as well.”