Kane confident of England’s best version against Serbia amid the background of a hostile and intimidating crowd.
Kane hopes England can show ‘best version of ourselves’ in hostile Serbia.
Harry Kane has previously performed at Belgrade’s Red Star Stadium. The England captain cites it as one of his top three most scary away sites, and with good reason—it was with his old team, Tottenham, in 2019. For the record, the other two are Rams Park in Galatasaray and the Vélodrome in Marseille.
The fact that the Virage Nord was blocked due to incidents involving the Marseille crowd did not affect Kane’s 2022 visit to the former with Spurs. In 2023, he experienced the latter’s deafening whistles with Bayern Munich, his current team. Although Red Star’s stadium is now known as the Rajko Mitic Stadium, the fundamental evil remains the same.
“It’s just the walk from the changing room to the pitch – it feels like a mile long,” Kane said. “There’s a lot of fans, you hear a lot of noise, a lot of banging. So, yeah, it was pretty hostile.”
Even though over 15% of the stadium will be vacant due to FIFA regulations, Kane’s comeback with England for Tuesday night’s World Cup qualifying match against Serbia is sure to be an exciting event. Following the discriminatory actions of Serbian supporters against Andorra in June, the regulatory board has imposed the sentence.
The hardliners in the home seats, as well as those in the visiting enclosure and countless others seated on sofas across England, will exert pressure. Because there are elements of a moment of truth in this tie.
“When you go to tough environments, you sometimes come away, especially when you win, with an even better feeling,” he said. “When you get through these types of games together, especially as a newish team like we are, that’s how you build experiences and togetherness.
“There might be times when we have to stick together, defend as a team and, ultimately, find a way to win. When you are able to do that against these types of oppositions in these stadiums, I feel like that builds an extra layer of togetherness that you can’t form without playing.
“So far [under Tuchel], we’ve had a lot of games where we’ve played against low blocks, where we’ve had a lot of possession and have almost played against ourselves in a way. The teams we’ve faced are almost happy to lose 1-0 or 2-0, whereas tomorrow night is going to be completely different. Hopefully, we can show the best version of ourselves – with and without the ball.”