World Cup 2026: Harry Kane reveals message to England team-mates ahead of Croatia opener | OneFootball

Three Lions face familiar foes in Texas this evening

England captain Harry Kane has revealed his final dressing-room message to his team-mates before today’s World Cup opener will be to use their physicality and strength against Croatia.

The Three Lions begin their World Cup campaign against famous faces, the Croats, at Dallas Stadium in Arlington today.

A sixth tournament with England is also Kane’s fifth in a row as captain, but the first under head coach Thomas Tuchel.

Kane will be expected to give a rallying cry to his team-mates in the dressing room at the AT&T Stadium before they step out onto the pitch ready to meet the team ranked 11th in the world as their World Cup campaign finally gets underway.

“I think the messaging will be to go with freedom,” Kane said. “I think we have an extremely strong team, we have a physical team. I think that’s going to be a big aspect of our game, so: ‘Go out there to use that’.

“I think it’s the ones where you feel like you could have given more, you feel like you could have been a bit more free, you could have just went for it.

Lead by example: Harry Kane

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Kane will draw level on 115 caps with Sir David Beckham against Croatia and spoke about his pride of matching the tally reached by his childhood hero.

“[I will be] extremely proud to hopefully reach the same amount of caps as Sir David,” he said.

“He was a hero of mine growing up. I was a massive England fan and him being England captain, he was a big inspiration to me, just the way he worked on the pitch but also how he was off the pitch as well.

“We were from the same area, we went to the same school, so he was a hero of mine.

“We’ve had contact, not recently, but obviously over the tournaments previous. We exchange messages every now and then and after winning trophies or whatever it might be, we keep in contact. I’m sure he’ll be in contact throughout this tournament because he’s a massive England fan.

“Looking back at that picture with me and him [as children] and obviously my wife there, who was just a friend at the time, it’s a pretty crazy picture when we all look back at it.”