England vs Croatia, World Cup 2018: We fell short of our potential laments Harry Kane

A visibly upset England skipper says the Three Lions should have done better in the World Cup but is hopeful for the young squad's future

Harry Kane believes England fell short of what they were capable of achieving at the World Cup, but is confident they can continue to build on the foundations that Gareth Southgate has created.

“It’s been great to get to this stage and we know we’ve done everyone proud, but we wanted to go on and we wanted to win it,” Kane said after the game. “We felt we were good enough and we felt we could have done that, but we fell a bit short. It hurts. The next step is now to go one further, it’s a great foundation we’ve built with the gaffer over the last couple of years and we just need to carry that on but we want more. We’re sad for the fans here and at home. We have to dust ourselves done and be proud of what we achieved and go again in a couple of years.”

England failed to build on Trippier’s fifth minute goal and squandered several good opportunities to go two in front, including one chance that fell to Kane one-on-one, but he could not beat Danijel Subasic. “We’re gutted. We worked so hard. The fans were amazing. It was a tough 50-50 game. I’m sure we’ll look back and there’s stuff we could have done better.

“It’s going to hurt for a while, but we can hold our heads up high. It’s been a fantastic journey and we got further than anyone would have thought we would have. We’ve just got to learn from it.

Kane says England must build on Southgatre’s foundations (Getty Images)

“We created some good chances being 1-0 up. Maybe we got a little too deep at times and we didn’t get enough pressure at times. It’s a lot of ifs and buts. It’s hard in these games its small margins, it went their way today.

“Until they scored, we was always under the cosh when they scored we picked back up again. There’s a lot we could have done better, they played well and they made it difficult for us. It’s hard to put a finger on it now.

“It shows we can be up there and we can win knock out games we can get to semi-finals.”