Harry Kane reacts to penalty miss in England's defeat to France

Harry Kane has said that he was prepared to take two penalties against France in England’s 2-1 World Cup quarter-final defeat, but was let down by his execution.

The 29-year-old slotted home his first penalty with ease, sending Tottenham teammate Hugo Lloris the wrong way, but rocketed his second effort high over the crossbar with just six minutes of normal time remaining.

England were afforded eight minutes of stoppage time in order to find another way to equalise but France held firm to book a semi-final date with surprise package Morocco, who ousted Portugal by the odd goal in Saturday’s afternoon game

After the final whistle, Kane sank to his knees as his teammates attempted to console him, before composing himself to tell ITV about what went wrong from 12 yards.

“No. I’m always someone who prepares for getting one or two penalties in a game, I always have an idea of what I want to do,” Kane said. “I can’t fault my preparation or anything like that, it was just the execution on the night. The first pen was great, the second one I didn’t quite hit it how I wanted to.

“I have to take it on the chin, it will hurt for sure, the whole game will hurt. As the captain, I’ll take that, but I couldn’t be prouder of the boys.

“It comes down to a small detail I’ll take responsibility for. I’m not worried about the team and how it will impact them. We have some great talent.”

Kane also received the backing of manager Gareth Southgate and Jordan Henderson, with the latter saying of England’s captain: “We know how many penalties Harry has scored for us, how many goals he has contributed to even get us here.

“He will be stronger for this in the future. He is a world-class striker and our captain, he will bounce back.”

France had taken the lead on 17 minutes thanks to Aurelien Tchouameni’s tremendous long-range effort before Kane levelled from the spot. But Les Bleus’ passage through to the last four was sealed 12 minutes from time, when Olivier Giroud got ahead of Harry Maguire at the front post to guide Antoine Griezmann’s pinpoint cross past Jordan Pickford at his near post.