Shooting star: How Harry Kane became Tottenham and England’s leading striker

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Richard Parry4 October 2017

“Harry’s best attribute was his great self-belief.”

This is Harry Kane, age six.

Dave Bricknell, his manager at Ridgeway Rovers, told the BBC’s Tom Fordyce back in 2016 of his first encounter with a young Kane in 1999. He described a ‘little boy’ who loved playing football, who volunteered to go in goal during the club’s annual trials.

"Then I get told he's not a goalkeeper, he's on pitch,” continued Bricknell. “So I think OK, and I stick him on the pitch. And he's scoring loads of goals, on a very long pitch as well, so he ends up being our striker.”

Fast-forward 18 years and Kane is banging in goals for club and country, for fun: 110 so far for Tottenham, 10 in 21 appearances for the senior England side.

Kane’s rise over the past three years has been astronomical, and he’s even played in goal along the way, too. Some things, it seems, never change.

But above all else, the driving force behind Kane’s career has been an unwavering self-belief and meticulous work ethic. It is little wonder why his now manager, Mauricio Pochettino, and teammates past and present, ‘love’ him.

The ‘obsessed’ professional

Photo: Nigel Roddis/Getty Images
Nigel Roddis/Getty Images

Speaking on Sky Sport’s show The Debate, fellow academy graduate and former Spurs teammate Ryan Mason offered a glimpse into how Kane not only made the grade, but became Tottenham’s head boy.

“I don’t think people realise how hard he does work,” Mason explained. “You can see he is a phenomenal finisher – some of that’s natural to a certain extent – a lot of these finishes come from hours, and hours of working on the training ground.

“If you saw Harry when he was 19-20 you would have looked at him and gone ‘he’s a bit heavy, he’s not really got that turn of pace over five-yards’ and Harry really realised that so for years he’s been working on his body. I look at him now and he gets away from defenders, and he’s an animal, he’s an absolute beast up the top and he leads the line on his own.”

“I look at him now from a physical point of view and I don’t think there’s a weakness, and that is off the back of him putting in the hours in the gym and on the training pitch, eating the right food, not drinking alcohol, and just being obsessed with making himself become the best possible version of himself.”

How the hard work paid off

Photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Kane wasn’t a hit at Tottenham overnight. Far from it.

He had four spells out on loan between 2011 and 2013, with varying degrees of success. His time with Leicester City, for example, was a particular low point.

It was at Millwall, during a four-month loan spell in 2012, which would be the making of him.

Kane would score nine goals in 27 appearances for The Lions as they successfully fought-off relegation from the Championship.

In an interview with Standard Sport in March 2015, he said: “I’ll never forget it. The relief on everyone’s faces - the players, the fans. It showed me how much the game could mean.”

Striking setbacks

Photo: Julian Finney/Getty Images
Julian Finney/Getty Images

Despite notching 84 Premier League goals thus far, Kane’s mental strength has been tested by setbacks along the way.

Since breaking into the Tottenham first team under Tim Sherwood in 2013, Kane has missed 23 Premier League matches through injury.

In Pictures | Harry Kane's Premier League goals 2016/17

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He sustained two separate malleolar injuries last season that sidelined him for a total of 75 days.

He recovered from the first of these to be passed fit for the north London derby clash with Arsenal at the Emirates, and scored in a 1-1 draw. He would go on to net six times in the following five matches across all competitions.

In March 2017, he was forced off injured during the FA Cup quarter-final tie with Millwall. Following his return 26 days later, he would finish the season with 14 goals in his final 11 matches for club and country.

Embracing the game plan

Photo: Getty Images
Getty Images

In Performance, a series featured in FourFourTwo in which professional players offer tips and advice to kids looking to advance in the game, Kane stresses the importance of buying into the manager’s philosophy.

“You’ve got to listen to what the manager wants,” he said. “If he wants you to go and do a certain job, even if you don’t agree with it, just listen to what he says and go out there and do it.”

The strength of Tottenham’s attack under Pochettino is maintained by an ability to interchange fluidly across the entire front four, not just three attacking midfielders.

Whereas other strikers, such as Romelu Lukaku or Christian Benteke, may prefer to stay in predominantly central positions while the supporting players interchange behind, Kane is comfortable dropping deep, or operating out wide, much like Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial.

This varied movement helps create space for Dele Alli’s late runs into the box, and for Heung-min Son to drift in from the left, while Christian Eriksen is allowed additional space on the crest of the final third as the opposition tracks the quicker movements of his teammates.

This selfless movement would normally result in a lessened goal return for the main striker, but Kane’s ability and confidence in shooting from distance and from acute angles enables him to maintain his impressive strike rate.

Striking stats

Photo: REUTERS
REUTERS

Kane has scored over 20 league goals in each of the past three campaigns, with last season’s tally of 29 his best to date. He was won the golden boot for the past two campaigns.

EPL games per goal ratio

Sergio Aguero | 1.460
Harry Kane | 1.464
Romelu Lukaku | 2.097 

Only Sergio Aguero boasts a better games-per-goal ratio than Kane of the Premier League’s top strikers. And only just. 1.460 to Kane’s 1.464.

Kane has scored six in Tottenham’s opening seven league games, with an additional five strikes in Tottenham’s two Champions League matches.

He has made no secret of his desire to win the illustrious Ballon d’Or award one day, as he dreams of becoming one of the world’s best forwards.

“Harry’s just obsessed,” says Mason. “For the last couple of years after his breakthrough year at Spurs when he got 30-odd goals I think his mindset completely changed. Now he’s set his sights on being the best striker in the world and I couldn’t think of many people better than him right now.”

On Thursday England manager Gareth Southgate will ask him to fire his country through to next summer’s World Cup finals in Russia. For Kane, it will be the opportunity to make his mark on the greatest stage of all.

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