There were sniggers in the room and Harry Kane heard them. It was the assembled media's reaction to the England captain's claim that, with Cristiano Ronaldo having already struck a hat-trick in the World Cup, he was under pressure to do the same if he wanted to win the Golden Boot.

It was the evening of June 17, 2018 and Kane was speaking ahead of his country's opening game against Tunisia. England had stunk the place out at Euro 2016, had not got through to the last 16 of a World Cup since 2006 and Kane had never scored in a major tournament. And yet here he was talking about not only his own vaulting ambition, but his dream of winning the World Cup - the “big gold one”, as he put it on that sticky, humid evening at the Volgograd Arena.

In this exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport to mark the end of another extraordinary year for Kane, one in which he scored 42 goals in 63 appearances for club and country, led England to within minutes of the World Cup final and in which the fans fell in love with their national side again, the striker candidly opens up as to what it all meant. And, significantly, what drives him on to achieve even more in the coming years - specifically, winning a trophy and, eventually, even that trophy.

“There are different paths for footballers,” Kane says. “Some are thrown in quite early and they have huge skill and huge talent and you can see that. Me? I had to do it by going out on loan, proving myself there, and then coming back and maybe having to sit on the bench, waiting for my opportunity to prove that I was capable at this level.

“My whole career I have had to prove people wrong and almost play with a chip on my shoulder. That motivation is just something that’s been inside me, instilled in me: whether it is proving managers or friends or family or fans that I can do this. It’s something that brings the best out of me.”

Mauricio Pochettino has a close bond with Harry Kane credit: Getty Images

“Prove” is a word Kane uses a lot. He wants to prove some people wrong but, conversely, also prove others right - such as England manager Gareth Southgate, who decided that Kane would be his captain and the Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino, with whom the player has such a strong bond. The Argentinean even texted Kane during the World Cup with the message: “Come on England!”

“I thrive on it,” Kane says. “And I think that also comes down to wanting to prove people right. I wanted to prove Gareth right by naming me captain and I felt I did that in the tournament. Being a striker people look to you to score goals but being a captain they also look to you to do even more. It’s about proving myself every time I play.

“I am someone whose dreams go right to the highest level, who wants to go to the highest level, be at the highest level. I’d rather do that and fall short than set my ambitions lower. I will do everything to be one of the best ever. That’s the mind-set you need.”

Kane’s rise is well-documented. A Spurs academy graduate, “one of our own” as the chant goes, he went through loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Leicester and Norwich, as doubts persisted over whether he was good enough.

Harry Kane set his sights on winning the Golden Boot - and delivered credit: Clive Rose - FIFA

Now Kane is – again – top scorer in the Premier League, with his club fighting for the title and in the last 16 of the Champions League and in the semi-finals of the League Cup. He has 121 goals in 170 Premier League games, 13 in 16 Champions League games and 20 in 35 England appearances. By any standards, it is a remarkable record.

I remind Kane of an article he did for The Players’ Tribune website, to mark reaching 100 Premier League goals. In it he talks about a documentary he watched about the legendary American football quarter-back Tom Brady. “Turns out, Tom Brady was the 199th pick in his draft class. It just blew my mind – but in a good way,” Kane wrote at the time.

He remembers it well. “It is a real inspiration,” he says. “Seeing how he became the best ever from people doubting him. He was 199th in the draft. 199th! It showed that in sport anything is possible - and in life, too.

"It gave me huge self-belief and confidence that I was going to make it; I was going to prove myself on the big stage. My career has been quite similar. Hopefully now I can go on and win a few trophies and go down as one of the best strikers in the world.”

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Before going to Russia Kane had given another telling press conference in which he said he believed England could win the World Cup. It was quite deliberate - he wanted to get that message out.

“I wanted to say that because I meant it,” Kane explains. “There’s no point going there to just get through the group stages or even to come third or fourth. There’s nothing wrong in saying we want to win it; it had to be said.

“We had that belief and it was important the fans knew that. We were not just going for a ‘jolly-up’ or just to be part of it. We were going there to try and perform and show ourselves on the world stage. So it was important for me to set that tone – whether that was in the press conference or when we were talking about it amongst ourselves.”

Harry Kane and Gareth Southgate with their welcome gifts at their Repino training base, ahead of the Russia World Cup credit: JULIAN SIMMONDS

Or with scoring goals. “I will always back myself. And I will always give an honest answer. That day in Volgograd I obviously didn’t know how it would go but I knew I was capable of scoring goals. I’d had the experience in the Euros a couple of years before which was a deeply disappointing performance personally and for the team.

“So I felt like I had a real point to prove going into the World Cup. I’d been doing well for club and for country in the games leading up to it but this was the biggest stage of them all, the World Cup, and I really wanted to prove to the world that I belonged on it.”

Kane scored twice against Tunisia that night, defying the swarms of flies and clouds of insect repellent sprayed on the stadium by helicopters before kick-off. The second was the vital, 91st-minute winning goal which England assistant manager Steve Holland said was the most important moment of the tournament. It lifted the pressure; transformed the mood.

“I think that goal set the tone for an enjoyable World Cup,” Kane says. “The fans went mad, at home as well, and we went mad and it allowed us to perform the way we did against Panama and after that.”

Harry Kane scores from the penalty spot in England's 6-1 win over Panama credit: AP

On a sweltering afternoon back home England then beat Panama 6-1, the most goals they had ever scored in a World Cup game, with Kane scoring a hat-trick. Suddenly they were through to the last 16 with one game to spare.

“I remember one training session,” Kane says as he recalls the build-up to the last 16 tie against Colombia. “Steve Holland and Jordan Henderson were there and we were just practising penalties and literally my left foot was slipping down into the turf because that area had been used so much.”

Inevitably it did go to penalties, with Kane having scored from the spot before Yerry Mina’s 93rd-minute equalising goal took it into extra-time.

“No-one panicked, we knew what the plan was and if it went to penalties we knew we were capable of winning it. There was no fear,” Kane says. “When Hendo missed you saw that he didn’t drop his head, he stood up tall and we knew we had two more chances.

England celebrate their penalty shoot-out win over Colombia in Moscow credit: Getty Images

“It’s hard to explain what it was like afterwards, to be honest, but it was after that that we truly believed that we were going to go all the way. Why not? We’d proved to ourselves that we could get through a knockout game, that we could do it on penalties. In the changing room it was just amazing.”

A quarter-final win over Sweden was followed by the semi-final against Croatia and the cruel reality of falling short. Just. “We were so close and that’s the hardest thing to take,” Kane says. “We were proud but as professional footballers we are winners. We want to win. We are there to win. It genuinely was our aim: to win the tournament. We were that close, one game away, minutes away, from playing in the World Cup final which would have been the game of our lives.

“It hurts. It still hurts. It hurts right now talking about it. We want to use that, though, to turn it around in two years time [at Euro 2020], in four years time [at the 2022 World Cup]. But I’m not going to lie – it will stay with us for the rest of our careers. The only thing we can do though is to try and get back there and do it right next time.”

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But there were so many pluses. My colleague Sam Wallace wrote that "this glorious, beer-soaked Russian summer" had "changed English football and the England team forever", and Kane - who ended the year being awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list, with Southgate receiving an OBE - agrees. It really was a summer of love for England. But it needs to be a platform, a launchpad for greater things.

Oh, and he did win that Golden Boot with six goals, the first Englishman to be leading scorer at a World Cup since Gary Lineker in 1986 and the first to score in six consecutive internationals since Tommy Lawton in 1939. Ronaldo was one of five players to score four times in Russia.

Harry Kane with the Golden Boot, which he won courtesy of his six goals at Russia 2018 credit: AP

“There had been a real disconnect between England and the fans and even the media,” Kane says. “I think Gareth was brilliant in the way he opened us up to the media and showed us not to be scared, to talk openly and everyone responded to that well, including you guys.

"We were there to have fun, to enjoy it, but to take it seriously as well. We worked incredibly hard throughout the whole camp. There was no negativity. It was just young lads having a good time in what was a very high-pressure situation.

"It’s an experience I will never, ever, ever forget and neither will the fans or the media, either. Hopefully it’s not the best tournament we have in the next 20 years. Hopefully there is more to come. I really think we can do that.”

Roll on 2019.