Harry Kane was sitting in a press conference ahead of England’s first World Cup game against Croatia just as Norway were wrapping up their 4-1 win over Iraq. Had he noticed Erling Haaland’s two goals? Had he seen Kylian Mbappe score twice too? Of course he had. The race for the Golden Boot has begun, as Kane is well aware of who he’s up against.
Kane was asked to name best strikers in the tournament, by a Swedish journalist fishing for a compliment after Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyokeres both scored against Tunisia.
“If you look at the one playing right now, Erling, and Mbappe scoring a couple for France earlier, they’ve both had fantastic years as goalscorers and strikers, two of the top, top players,” Kane said. “They’ve obviously both started the tournament really well today, so yeah, apart from Sweden, I’ll probably vote with those two as two of the best in the World Cup.”
That was before Lionel Messi scored a hat-trick against Algeria, equalling Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 World Cup goals. Haaland posted on social media: “Messi is a madman.” The stars are watching each other and you suspect they all know that Kane scored 61 goals for Bayern Munich this season, a higher tally than any of his rivals.
He is England’s greatest player, according to Wayne Rooney. He is certainly England’s best modern player, someone who took his talent and multiplied it, growing to unimaginable heights through dedication and commitment to his craft.
The stats nerds will tell you finishing doesn’t really exist as a skill, that eventually all players revert to the mean of their expected goals, that no one can game the system. Well, Kane has trained himself to break it. He outstripped his expected Bundesliga goals by 6.42, according to Understat. Last season his outscored his xG by 1.16, the season before by 2.88. The season before that, at Spurs, by 6.94. You have to go back five years to find a season in which Kane didn’t outscore his expected goals. That is a rare thing: Cristiano Ronaldo has spent his entire career pretty much on his xG trend line.
Watch all of Kane’s 36 Bundesliga goals from this season and a few things jump out. Firstly, he is very good at penalties, which might be handy at the World Cup. He will apply the stutter run-up most of the time but mixes in the traditional run and fire technique to keep goalkeepers on their toes. His head is good. His left foot is great. His right foot is an absurd weapon of vicious power and clinical accuracy, a trained killer of a limb that should only be used with a licence.
When he’s in the box he drills the ball into his chosen corner with power. When he’s outside the box he uses more finesse, curling finishes around goalkeepers’ outstretched hands. His other method of scoring is to poach in the six-yard box and his instincts in that space are phenomenal, telegraphing rebounds before they fall and sensing exactly where a teammates’ cross will land.
He is always England’s great hope coming into a summer tournament, but perhaps never more so than this time in North America.
“I would say from a personal point of view, it’s the best season that I’ve ever had,” Kane said. “First and foremost, obviously scoring a lot more goals than what I have in any other previous season, which is obviously pleasing. But I think also just physically and mentally, the way the season ended for me was obviously in a great way, to win the league and win the cup final and to score the three goals there, I think it just gave me even more momentum coming into the pre-camp with the boys.
“Just from a physical point of view, just feel in great shape in the training sessions and in the matches that we played, so throughout your career you need a lot of things to go your way and fall into place at the right time, and I feel like it has for this tournament, so for sure it’s one of the best opportunities we will have as a team to win it.”
Kane’s relationship with the World Cup is complicated. He uncharacteristically missed a penalty against France in Qatar four years ago as England exited at the quarter-finals. He won the Golden Boot at his first World Cup in 2018, when England reached the semi-finals, but he looked laboured at times during the knockout stages and particularly in their extra-time defeat by Croatia, who they meet again in Dallas.
“I think obviously a lot of time has passed since that game, and a lot of experiences have been gained,” Kane said. “We expect a tough game, Croatia are always a well-organised side, they have some great technical players who can be dangerous, so we need to be ready for that. But I think from our point of view, we feel like when we’re at our very best, we’re an extremely tough team to beat, both from a physical point of view and a technical point of view as well.
“All the experiences over all the tournaments, I think you can learn from them a little bit. But I’d say it’s been a long time, I think the team was in a totally different place back then, hadn’t been far in a tournament for a long time. We’ve been able to reach semi-finals and finals since then, and I think that will boost the confidence as well.”
Kane is in North America looking for gold. He is here, first and foremost, to lift the World Cup. But he also has one eye on the Golden Boot. And if Kane wins both of those, there’s a good chance he’ll be wearing a sharp suit holding a glittering golden orb on stage in Paris at the end of the year.
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