Harry Kane has rewritten the history books and broken records with sustained brilliance for clubs and country over more than a decade.
The 32-year-old holds England’s all-time scoring record, with a remarkable 74 goals in 109 appearances, with power to add as Thomas Tuchel’s side move to the brink of qualification for next summer’s World Cup.
Kane is also Tottenham Hotspur’s greatest goalscorer, with 280 goals in 435 appearances before moving to Bayern Munich in an £86.4m deal in August 2023.
And Kane’s stunning consistency has continued since moving to Munich, scoring 103 goals in 106 appearances for Bayern – also ending his long wait for a trophy when winning the Bundesliga last season.
Kane reached his century of goals for Bayern with a double in a 4-0 win against Werder Bremen. He achieved the feat in 104 games, putting him ahead of Erling Haaland and Cristiano Ronaldo as the fastest player to reach 100 for a single club in Europe’s top five leagues – after they hit the landmark for Manchester City and Real Madrid in 105 games.
He has scored 19 goals in 12 games for England and Bayern this season – one every 52 minutes.
And yet, for all these achievements, is Kane still underappreciated?
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Is Kane taken for granted?
Kane is England’s goalscoring talisman – but there are still those who question whether he could have done more, asking whether his international record has been aided by qualifiers against inferior opposition.
Former England striker Chris Sutton puts the argument to bed in a single sentence: “If Harry Kane announced his retirement from international football today, we would instantly view the England team and their chances at next year’s World Cup in a completely different light.”
He added: “Kane may not have too long left with England, but who is the replacement? Who is anywhere near his level? No-one. That tells you all you need to know. As an all-rounder and ruthless goalscorer, England haven’t had many better.
“People say about scoring goals in qualifiers but he’s not the fixtures secretary, is he? He can’t help who he plays against. He’s a goalscoring machine and has been all his career.
“When you are talking about all-time great England strikers, he has to be in that conversation. Just look at his numbers.”
Major tournaments have not always been kind to Kane, starting with Euro 2016 in France when he took more corners than he scored goals – seven versus none – thanks to a bizarre set-piece strategy from manager Roy Hodgson, summing up a shambolic campaign that ended in humiliation against Iceland in the last 16.
Two years later in Russia, as England captain, Kane won the Golden Boot at the World Cup, scoring six goals in six games as Sir Gareth Southgate’s side reached the semi-finals.
He was England’s top scorer when they reached the final of the delayed Euro 2020 tournament with four goals in seven games, although the 2022 World Cup ended in disappointment as Kane missed a penalty in the 2-1 defeat by France in the quarter-final in Qatar.
Kane, by his own standards, had a disappointing Euro 2024, looking so jaded there was a clamour for England’s captain to be replaced by Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins.
He was substituted in every one of England’s knockout matches, including after only 61 minutes of the final loss to Spain in Berlin – and yet still finished as the tournament’s joint top scorer with three goals from seven games.
Kane is England’s highest goalscorer in major tournaments, with 15 goals from 29 games. This total puts him fifth, when ranking combined European Championship and World Cup goals, behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Germany trio Miroslav Klose, Gerd Muller and Jurgen Klinsmann.
So has his stellar contribution been underappreciated?
Sutton says: “Anybody who has played either with or against him, raves about him.
“If people do not give him the credit he deserves, it may be because he’s been England’s main man for so long. People are sometimes there to chop you down.
“England players get judged on major tournaments and if they don’t win it the criticism comes, with the high-profile captain usually first in that firing line.
“You can have rivalries, tribalism and social media, and there will be people who put the boot in, but you won’t get anyone who has played the game to a reasonable level having any doubts about him. And I think most fair-minded supporters recognise what a player Harry Kane is.”
Sutton added: “He has never been blessed with great pace but the way his brain works is fantastic. He’s not just a phenomenal goalscorer. He has the ability to drop deep to influence games, showing wonderful awareness, weight of passing, vision.”
Former England defender Matthew Upson, who played against Kane and watches him regularly as a BBC Radio 5 Live pundit, says: “The phrase ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’ springs to mind with Harry.
“I also think what plays into that is Kane’s profile. For the scale of what he does, I think he keeps his profile quite low.
“He is quite understated in the way he operates, being the figure he is in world football.
“Other players are hitting numbers that are not quite as good as his, but you see them making more of a song and dance about what they are doing than he does.”
As good as Haaland – or even better?
Manchester City’s Haaland is the benchmark for Premier League strikers, with Saturday’s hat-trick against Israel taking his tally to 21 goals from 12 games for Norway and his club this season.
When it comes to endurance and consistency, however, Kane is the gold standard.
In 11 full seasons for Spurs and Bayern, since 2014-15, Kane has never scored fewer than 24 goals in all competitions.
BBC Sport pundit Pat Nevin expresses the view that Kane matches Haaland as a goalscorer, then arguably exceeds him as the more complete player.
The former Scotland winger said: “Far be it from a Scotsman to tell English people what to think, but although much-loved I still think Harry is slightly underestimated. This guy is utterly and completely brilliant.”
And the Haaland comparison?
Nevin explained: “It is no denigration of Erling Haaland, who is one of the great players in world football. In England, they admire Harry and all the rest of it, but he also should be considered one of the greats in world football. Maybe he’s not seen as that in England, but he is.
“Harry’s numbers are fantastic. They are even better when you consider a lot of these numbers were achieved when he was playing with Spurs.
“Spurs were a good side but they weren’t Manchester City. It’s not a problem with Haaland, but I just don’t think Harry is put into that bracket often enough.”
City manager Pep Guardiola once infamously referred to Spurs as “the Harry Kane team”. He tried to sign the striker in 2021 but Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy refused to sell, Guardiola then signing Haaland a year later.
Nevin said: “I’ve always thought from an outsider’s perspective, if you put Harry in Manchester City’s team, with the chances they were creating, would he have scored the same amount of goals as Haaland? I would not be in the least bit surprised if he did.
“As a pure footballer, Harry can play more positions, he can move into those deeper positions. I’ve been fortunate enough to see Harry play quite a few times for Bayern Munich.
“When you are watching a game when Haaland is at his best, your eye is always drawn to him. It seems like there are 21 footballers out there and Haaland.
“If you go and watch Harry Kane at Bayern, one of the top teams in the world, it is Kane and 10 others. He is a force of nature. And not just in Bundesliga games. I am talking Champions League games. He is a colossus.”
Germany in awe of ‘superstar with youngster’s mentality’
Kane received one of the ultimate accolades recently when German tabloid Bild publicly retracted criticism of Bayern’s decision to sign Kane.
Journalist Alfred Draxler wrote: “I was one of those who viewed the 100m euros transfer from Tottenham to Bayern Munich in 2023 rather critically.”
In a complete about-turn, Draxler said: “I don’t think Harry Kane is vacationing in a hotel where you have to reserve your lounger in the morning. If I ever meet him, I’d get up really early and put a towel on his lounger for him. I wouldn’t do that for any English person!”
Bayern had no such doubts, with footage on social media of Kane being greeted ecstatically on his arrival by Thomas Tuchel, the then Bayern coach who is now plotting England’s path to next summer’s World Cup.
German football writer Raphael Honigstein told BBC Sport: “Harry Kane’s overall game and attitude is such that the fans and those inside the dressing room are simply in awe of this guy.
“When Kane arrived, there was a sense he was the real deal. Maybe concerns were the fee, injury record and his age. There were a few reservations and trepidations but they didn’t last very long.”
He added: “The numbers are one thing, but if it was just the numbers the impact wouldn’t be as big. Robert Lewandowski had the numbers, he broke Gerd Muller’s record, but Kane, unlike a typical centre-forward, plays with a sense of humility and with responsibility for the collective.
“He plays like a superstar but with the mentality of a youngster who has got everything to prove. Someone who isn’t beyond doing the extra yards and helping out, often in his own box. Just an amazing impact.”
Upson agrees Kane is a low-key superstar, saying: “It’s rare in this day and age for a player to be a superstar, like he is, but not to portray himself as one. It’s not the model of what he is.
“In a world where marketing and social media plays a huge part in creating your persona, I think he doesn’t play into that as much as a lot of other star players.”
