‘A fantastic journey’ over for skipper

ENGLAND striker and skipper Kane reflected on a painful evening, saying: “It’s tough. We’re gutted, we’ve worked so hard and the fans were amazing.

“It was a tough game, a 50-50 game, I’m sure we’ll look back at stuff we could have done better but we worked as hard as we could.

“This will hurt for a while but we can hold our heads up, it’s been a fantastic journey but we’ve got to learn from it and take what we can.

“We created some good chances, being 1-0 up we got a little too deep at times and didn’t get enough pressure on the ball. There are lot of ifs and buts. In a lot of games it’s small margins and it went their way today.

“Until they scored we were always under the cosh, then when they scored we picked it up again. But they played well and made it difficult for us.

“It’s been great to get to this stage but we wanted to go on and win it. We felt we were good enough but have fallen just a bit short.”

Kane added: “This shows we can be up there, win knockout games and get to semi-finals. The next step now is to go one (step) further.

“We’ve built a great foundation and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved - but we want more.

“We have to dust ourselves down, be proud of what we’ve achieved and go again in a couple of years.”

England keeper Jordan Pickford added: “It’s an experience for us. There’s nothing better than getting an early goal but we needed the next one. We had some good chances but never put them away.

“If we’d got that goal before half-time or in the first 15 minutes of the second half you might have the opportunity to win the game.

“They (Croatia) are a threat going forward and showed a bit in the second half - and we weathered some storms.”

On Croatia’s equaliser, Pickford questioned whether Perisic could have been penalised for a foul on Kyle Walker, adding: “Maybe it was a high foot against ‘Walks’...

“We’ve shown pride and passion. There was a lump in the throat and the hairs on my neck stood up watching the fans at the end. They know we’ve got beaten but we’ve come so far.”