How Harry Kane transcended England to become the best footballer in the world | OneFootball

The Three Lions’ captain has had to work hard for global acclaim — but it was hard graft that made him the player he is

Jose Mourinho once sat with Harry Kane in the manager’s office at Tottenham’s training ground and explained the difference between the two men.

Kane was a much younger 26 then, the reigning World Cup Golden Boot winner but not truly considered world class outside of England. A prolific striker for club and country, nothing more.

“I have no doubt: you are a winner,” said Mourinho, on his second day in the Spurs job.

His feeling, though, was that “the movie stars of football belong to other places”, that Kane was no superstar. In one of those rare moments when Mourinho brought the topic of conversation back to himself, he insisted that, by contrast, “my dimension is universal”.

“We have to build your status in that direction,” Mourinho said.

In the intervening six years, Kane has done so by himself, through dogged determination, constant refining of his craft, and the relentlessness that staying at the top of the sport for so long necessitates, not needing the help of Mourinho or anyone else.

Prophetic: Jose Mourinho saw ‘a winner’ in Harry Kane

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Kylian Mbappe and Michael Olise — Kane’s team-mate at Bayern Munich — are each offering a rather punchy riposte on a game-by-game basis with irrepressible France, but there is no escaping the very real possibility that at the time of writing, slap bang in the middle of a FIFA World Cup, the England captain is the greatest footballer on the planet.

The statistics feel an appropriate place to start. After all, stats are unarguable, uncomplicated, reliable. They do not let you down. Stats are made of the same stuff as Kane.

The striker’s decisive double to down DR Congo and save England on Wednesday constituted his 71st and 72nd goals in 62 matches for club and country this season. Goalscoring of such mechanical, clockwork regularity has seen him surpass Cristiano Ronaldo’s best-ever season. Kane’s campaign is already the second greatest season of goalscoring in football history, trailing only the superhuman tally of 82 goals in 69 games posted by Lionel Messi in 2011-12.

Kane had mentioned wanting to emulate Messi and Ronaldo in that 2019 heart-to-heart with Mourinho.

Irrepressible: Harry Kane’s brace against DR Congo saw him surpass Cristiano Ronaldo’s greatest goalscoring season

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He has 84 goals for England now, the same number the legendary Ferenc Puskas scored for Hungary, and overtook Pele for World Cup goals by notching his 13th. Those 13 have taken just 15 games, a quicker rate of return on the global stage than Messi, Ronaldo and Pele.

Yet statistics have not always been kind to Kane. It took the 32-year-old until last summer’s Bundesliga title to win the first trophy of his career. Surely one of the most unfathomable statistical anomalies football had ever thrown up, it had nevertheless stalked him for years.

After two European Championship finals, a World Cup semi-final and quarter-final and two major tournament Golden Boots with a third a distinct possibility this month, silverware with England is the big one. In his mind, individual accolades do not compare.

For all the sheer inevitability of Kane’s ruthlessness in front of goal, something felt different about that swivel, tee and brutal thump into the roof of the net to conquer DR Congo. It was a typically clutch moment yet felt rare in its beauty. It had saved England beautifully but had also been beautiful. Perhaps his knack for scoring and the heft of Kane’s body of work make it difficult to marvel at each strike in isolation. This was one of the great England World Cup goals.

Harry Kane did not win his first career silverware until he signed with Bayern Munich

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After the pre-tournament friendly win over New Zealand, Kane declared: “Physically and mentally it’s the best shape I’ve been in, in my career.”

The results are impossible to contest. His performances this summer are night and day compared with Euro 2024, when the back injury he carried through the tournament stymied him and England. There were straight-faced calls to drop him for Ollie Watkins, yet he still ended up sharing the Golden Boot.

And that has been Kane’s enduring quality: he delivers reliable results, England’s royal male. He is 33 later this month but has only improved with age, a player whose passing range has always been exquisite and whose nous and understanding of the game have taken him to new heights.

Kane, we must remember, was not even injured when failure to score in England’s first two games at the delayed Euro 2020 saw much of the nation claim he should be dropped. It is a compliment to how he has maintained his standards and become England’s greatest-ever player — Sir Bobby Charlton the only feasible rival — that not a soul is suggesting the same this time around and would be laughed out of town for even mooting it.

Undroppable: Harry Kane offers far more than just goals for England

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He stands alone as an England great who has only grown more influential with age and ensured major tournament displays reflect that. Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Paul Gascoigne, Glenn Hoddle, Frank Lampard, David Beckham: their tournament impact diminished as their careers wore on. Kane’s has risen.

The argument for Kane being the world’s best player is stronger now than ever, because he is at his peak. As a player, first you are physically good, then you get older and have to get smarter because you can’t physically keep doing what your more efficient brain wants you to. Kane is in the cross-section — and it is an irresistible sight to behold.

Comfortably the best player during his Tottenham years, the move to Bayern Munich in 2023 has elevated him. Not merely a better player now, he is unquestionably better appreciated around the world.

Irresistible: Harry Kane is at his peak of his powers

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Bayern’s honorary president, Uli Hoeness, declared Kane the greatest signing the club have ever made on the eve of May’s DFB Pokal final. Kane then scored a hat-trick in a 3-0 win as the superclub won the trophy for the first time in six years. Bayern had hoped he might be almost as influential for them as Robert Lewandowski. They admit he has surpassed all expectations.

The occasional dissenting claim that his goalscoring numbers are only possible because of the level of German domestic football are to imply that Kane couldn’t do it on a wet and windy Tuesday night in Stoke. Except he did, for ten seasons, becoming the Premier League's second-highest scorer in history in the process.

Bayern have come to appreciate the player Tottenham and England fans always knew they had — the striker whose tall frame and lack of searing pace disguise his Swiss Army Knife reality. For almost a decade, discussion has raged over whether Kane should drop deep as he does or should stay in the box. His sublime raking passes and deftly-weighted through-balls at a moment’s notice were enough to convince Mourinho, Southgate, Vincent Kompany and now Tuchel that Kane is best when he does as he pleases.

Harry Kane has been there and done it on grim, blustery evenings in Stoke

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Kane’s story gains romance because he is one of football’s sight-readers rather than playing his music by ear. His is a learnt talent honed by repetition, four EFL loan spells toughening up one of football’s great late bloomers.

That robotic repetition in training has made him a penalty specialist and a sumptuous ball-striker with an instinctive shooting ability, the ball immediately out of his feet and then driven, often low, precisely into the corner as though placed there by hand.

A 21-year-old Kane impressed in pre-season for Tottenham in 2014, yet Pochettino sat him down and informed him his body fat test result of 18 per cent was the highest in the team. Pochettino told him to work harder, telling him: “You can be the best striker in the world.” Kane’s unwavering belief in that statement is, more than anything, what has propelled him there.

Kane’s story gains romance because he is one of football’s sight-readers rather than playing his music by ear

England’s hopes of winning this World Cup rely to an unhealthy extent on the right foot, left foot and head of Kane. Tuchel can call on Jude Bellingham for big moments, too, but he knows his captain carries the mantle. It is starting to feel not dissimilar to watching him at Spurs, described by Pep Guardiola as “the Harry Kane team”.

That England’s players so enjoy playing with him is no surprise. Declan Rice this week called it “an honour”, while Watkins admitted: “I can’t emulate what he does. The way he plays the game is very unique. I can’t play like him.”

Anthony Gordon, who assisted both of Kane’s goals against DR Congo, gave the definitive assessment of what it is like to work with Walthamstow’s finest.

“Anyone at this level can put the ball in the top corner,” Gordon said. “It’s his consistency. He’s having a season that has only ever been beaten by the greatest footballer of all time; that speaks to the level he is playing at. You want to pick up as many habits and watch everything he does, to see why he is at that level.

It is no surprise that Harry Kane’s team-mates enjoy playing alongside him

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“It is no accident. It is his consistency every single day in training and every game. Every drill, he does it with seriousness. He never ever messes about.”

When Kane beat three DR Congo players to the header for his equaliser in Atlanta, before the ball had even reached the goal-line you could see Eberechi Eze stood behind Kane breaking out into a smile. He simply knew. As Kane’s winner crashed in, Bellingham collapsed to the floor in dramatic fashion as though his prayers had been answered by the divine.

Some will feel the true test of whether Kane really is unmatched must wait until the results of the Ballon d’Or in October. Others will protest that gong has long been a meaningless popularity contest. Regardless, his chances will take a hit if having failed to win the Champions League with Bayern he also falls short this month with England.

It will hardly be Kane’s fault if they do. Here is the complete player, who has spent the last 12 years representing Tottenham, Bayern and England and been the central cog in all three machines. He has never known anything other than being the man to whom others turn.

Mbappe, Olise, Erling Haaland and 39-year-old Messi have all come to the fore at this World Cup. Are any of them as integral to the all-round functioning of their team as Kane to England?

The established movie stars have come up big in America. Kane has not just joined them — he has worked his way up to the leading role, in his own, very English, way.