Kane tells Lineker to back England, not criticise

England captain Harry Kane has responded to Gary Lineker’s criticism of England’s performance in the 1-1 draw against Denmark at Euro 2024.

Lineker, a former England international and now host of the BBC’s coverage of the tournament, had referred to the performance as “s—” on a podcast.

“Building the lads up with confidence would have been a better way to go about it,” Kane said at an England news conference on Sunday.

“The bottom line is we haven’t won [any tournaments] as a nation for a long, long time and a lot of these [ex-players who are criticising] were a part of that [failure] as well.

“They know how tough it is. I would never disrespect any ex-player, what I’d say is just remember what it was like to wear the shirt and that their words are listened to.

“We all want to win a major tournament, I’m sure they want us to win a major tournament, being as helpful as they can would be a better way to go about it.”

Following the game against Denmark on Thursday there have been questions about the ability of England’s frontline to work together. Kane admitted they have not done enough yet but insisted there are no underlying problems.

“I have a good relationship with all of them [Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka], we just haven’t done well enough in the two games to show it yet,” he said.

Amid widespread criticism of the England team Kane urged fans to stay calm and insisted that the best is yet to come.

“During the tournament just support us and then after the tournament you can judge us,” Kane said. “During it [the tournament] it’s down to us as players to get it right, of course people will have their opinion but ultimately its us who makes the decisions and finds solutions.

“A lot of people talking about what we haven’t done well but what we have done well is defending, we are calm, we have been here before.”

England are top of group C with four points and will face Slovenia in their final group game on Tuesday in Cologne.