Harry Kane is the best of England and global game recognises he is not just an 'English No9'
Harry Kane travels a few miles to West Ham this weekend for a very London, very English kind of dust-up. But his reputation is travelling far, over land and sea. His place in the European goalscoring elite is now secure.
English football was shamed this week by the official list of the game’s top 55 players. People scoff at the Fifa/FIFPro World XI, but the long-list is decided by 25,000 professionals from 75 nations. And Kane is the only Englishman on there. With the best goals per game ratio (1.07) of any player in Europe’s top five leagues in 2017, he has broken into the platinum club.
Think Kane and you tend to see Spurs, England, Premier League, recreational golf with the Sky Sports commentariat. But he has become a ‘global’ player. On the Fifa/FIFPro roll of strikers with him are Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema, Edinson Cavani, Cristiano Ronaldo, Paulo Dybala, Antoine Griezmann, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robert Lewandowski, Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, Neymar, Alexis Sánchez and Luis Suárez.
The reason for reciting those names is to show that Kane is no longer an English secret, or a player in development. At 24, he has scored 103 times in 171 appearances for Spurs; only Alan Shearer has reached 80 Premier League goals faster. For two seasons he has held the league’s Golden Boot. By any measure Kane must be on the roll of players the biggest clubs look at as a no-risk signing, a guaranteed bet.
This summer, his name was virtually absent from the rumour-go-round of big name finishers. This was a major achievement by Spurs. While Neymar was being prised out of Barcelona, Ousmane Dembélé was replacing him at an ultimate cost of £130m and Mbappé was moving to PSG for an eventual £166m, no club made any serious move to extricate Kane from Tottenham. Or, if they did, they received no encouragement from player or employer.
If the raging desire to grab him at any price was not quite there, on the grounds that Mbappé and Neymar were more glamorous signings, nobody could argue Dembélé was a safer bet than Kane would have been. Kane sailed through his summer undisturbed. Hallelujah! Sooner or later, though, Europe’s superpowers will see him as a nailed-on proposition, as the 55-man long-list demonstrates.
Spurs fans will hate this, but if we allow the imagination to frame him alongside Messi and Suárez at Barcelona, replacing Lewandowski at Bayern Munich or joining Bale in Madrid, some will feel he is being lifted out of his natural context: London, the Premier League, English football.
The best young players in world football
But study his finishing, and his sometimes Teddy Sheringham-esque play off the front line, and you see a footballer who should not be pigeonholed as just an ‘English centre-forward.’ His athleticism, awareness and composure around the goal compensate for a lack of blinding pace, which these days tends to add tens of millions to a striker’s value.
Self-evidently Spurs need to become a trophy-winning club to keep him. In the meantime, to see him recognised beyond these islands is gratifying. A country with not much to shout about can at least proclaim the story of Harry Kane.
Chelsea are sole threat to Mancunian duopoly
If the Premier League were to stay the way it was heading into this weekend, there would be a play-off between Manchester City and Manchester United in May at a neutral venue: the ultimate kick in the teeth for the FA Cup final.
After five games, City and United were separated only by alphabetical order. Only once, the Premier League says, have the leaders been organised this way after five or more games - in 2014-15, 20 matches into the competition. The current stalemate will probably be broken when City host Crystal Palace and United travel to Southampton. But already it seems to tell the story.
After last weekend, pundits queued to say this is an all-Manchester title race, which everyone expected it to be 12 months ago. Both squads are vastly improved from the point in August 2016 where the league was reduced to the Pep Guardiola v Jose Mourinho show.
City will probably out-score United, but Mourinho’s team will be more varied in their approach to the must-win (or must-not-lose) fixtures. Chelsea took a small step backwards against Arsenal but still look the only threat to Mancunian power.
Everton gaps harder to fill than holes in Liverpool's defence
A cold summary of events on Merseyside is that Liverpool can’t defend while Everton can’t score. Both are nasty afflictions, but Liverpool’s is more easily cured, by coaching, as Jürgen Klopp seemed to acknowledge this week when discussing his team’s poor defensive shape when the opposition are attacking. This can be corrected, by instructing players to shut down games when they are leading, and react together when danger is building, instead of in ones and twos.
Everton, on the other hand, have not properly replaced Romelu Lukaku, which has forced Ronald Koeman to defend his players on the grounds of youth and inexperience. This is a diversion from the real story: the simple failure to fill the biggest gap a team can have.
Barry is a class act
A quick way to betray a lack of understanding of football would be to dismiss Gareth Barry as a journeyman. Barry, who makes a record 633rd Premier League appearance at Arsenal, is admired and respected by everyone in the game. His technical ability is routinely overlooked.
Wayne and Big Ginge - the new John and Kayleigh
A former Manchester United bodyguard called ‘Big Ginge’ is Wayne Rooney’s chauffeur to the Everton-Bournemouth game. Fair enough, but a Jeeves-like figure at the wheel would have been a better match for a version of Peter Kay’s Car Share. Big Ginge must at least wear the cap.
