Harry Kane reveals Declan Rice sent him a voice note explaining his absence as he opens up on England’s five drop-outs… and insists stars will hold inquest over Argentina defeat

Harry Kane believes England’s five World Cup drop-outs are losing out on vital preparation time for the 2028 European Championships.

Kane is no stranger to the matter of players withdrawing from England camps. In November 2024 the England captain delivered a resolute message to the nine players who had declared themselves unavailable through injury for the final two games of Lee Carsley’s spell as interim coach.

‘I think England comes before anything,’ said Kane back then. ‘England comes before club.’

Almost two years on, Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad following the World Cup will be missing Arsenal’s Declan Rice and Cole Palmer of Chelsea – who played 90 minutes for their clubs at the weekend – as well as Manchester United duo Marcus Rashford and Kobbie Mainoo and Newcastle full-back Tino Livramento.

Kane said: ‘We spend so much time at club level together and building on the pitch, off the pitch. You don’t get that luxury with international football.

‘So, for me, personally, just every moment together [matters], every camp together, just to get to know players, get to know how people play tactically, how the manager wants us to play.

‘All these things are really important as before we know it, we will be in the summer and then we will be in the Euros in 2028.

‘It seems we are far away from the Euros, we’re far away from Nations League final next summer, but we’re not.

‘We have two weeks now, we have a week in November. We have a week or so in March, and then we’re hopefully playing a Nations League semi-final and final in June, and then it’s the same next season.

‘So, although it seems far away, I think actually it’s not a long time at all.’

Two years ago, Kane accused his missing team mates of taking advantage of an opportunity to essentially have a break. This time he didn’t go anywhere near as far.

‘I’ve spoken about this before and I don’t want to make it make it a big thing,’ said Kane.

‘Everyone has their own situation. I know how tough the summer was and I know especially in the Premier League how gruelling that schedule is.

‘I trust all the boys. I spoke to Dec, for example. He sent me a voice note. I know Dec goes far and beyond for the club and country, so I know how much he gives and I know he’s been struggling for a while with his issues.

‘From our point of view, I think the togetherness that that we have will not be shaken through people not being here right now. All it does is give other people opportunity to impress the manager.’

Kane is 33 now and will match Peter Shilton’s England appearance record of 125 is he plays in all four games against Spain, Croatia and Czechia (twice) over the next fortnight.

Sitting in his training gear at St George’s Park today, the Bayern Munich striker looked in the shape of his life, something underlined by his status as one of the Ballon D’Or favourites ahead of the ceremony in London next month.

Mentally, however, the scars of an ultimately disappointing World Cup are taking longer to heal.

Kane revealed that he chose not to watch the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina, flying to New York to play golf as soon as England’s third-place play-off win had been secured against France the day before.

In his mind, questions remain unanswered. The most pertinent one revolves around the way that England played in defeat to Argentina in their semi-final in Atlanta.

‘This one hurt for sure more than any other one,’ said Kane.

‘I’d say even more than when I missed the penalty against France in Qatar because of the manner in which it happened.

‘It felt like it wasn’t us as a team out there. It wasn’t the team that we wanted to be and said we’d be.

‘I think sometimes when you maybe go against your beliefs and you lose, it feels 10 times worse than just losing doing it your way and accepting it and taking it on the chin and moving on.’

England’s retreat to their own penalty box after taking the lead against Argentina is something that continues to vex England supporters and indeed their coach. As such, it felt natural to ask Kane why it happened.

‘I think those are the questions that we need to kind of discuss amongst ourselves and answer ourselves, as players and as coaching staff,’ said Kane.

‘How can we be better in those moments? How can we be ourselves more in those moments? Through qualifying campaigns and a lot of games in tournaments, we play with a certain intensity and we play in in a good way.

‘It’s something that we haven’t quite been able to do in latter stages of tournaments against the bigger nations and the better nations and it may be a mixture of things. It may be personalities. It may be mentality. It may be just the direction and how we want to play in those games.

‘But I think it’s a conversation that we need to have as a group. We wanna try and take that next step because I think that would be an important one.’

England’s 24-man squad – Tuchel has replaced two of the missing group with Everton’s James Garner and Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White – gathered at their Staffordshire base on Monday and immediately sat down for a briefing with the head coach.

Tuchel’s public reflections on seven weeks in America last Friday were fascinating without ever being consistently enlightening. But it’s clear from what he said to his players this week that he has identified problems transferring training performances to matchday familiar to a series of England managers who have passed before.

Kane revealed: ‘I think it’s trying to translate how well we train into games.

‘It’s easier said than done, but if we can get better at that I think we’ll show an even better version of ourselves. So that was kind of the general meeting really.

‘We’re still going to talk about the summer and talk about good and bad. That will happen naturally over the next year.

‘We have to heal while getting on with it. In life in general, whenever there’s like big major events, you have time to process it, you have time to talk about it.

‘In football, you don’t have that. In football, before you know it’s the next one, and now we’re focused on Nations League.

‘So it’s a hard balance because you’re trying to get over it and learn from it. But also we play the world champions on Saturday and it’s a big, important game.’