The last decade has been England’s finest in 150 years of international football. The main reason is star and captain Harry Kane. He has scored 79 career goals, 26 more than any other Englishman in history, and is only getting better at the age of 33. It is hard to imagine us winning the World Cup this summer without him leading the effort. Yet surprisingly, the soccer giant remains a cultural footnote off the field.
He’s never been known for his supermodel looks, natural charisma or celebrity marriage – he’s just incredibly good at his job. Gary Lineker, another of England’s all-time great strikers, self-deprecatingly calls his podcast company Goalhanger. Kane is the opposite of a goalkeeper. He marries up and down the pitch, taking 50-yard passes to teammates and playing the ball back to defenders, often so clearly the best player on the pitch that he seems to start playing himself in every position.
But predecessors such as David Beckham and Paul Gascoigne loom larger in the national imagination, despite lesser football skills. Gascoigne’s tears in Italy in 1990 immortalized him overnight because of his apparent weakness. Recently, Kane has been more present in the national imagination for an ad in which he calls on Google’s AI assistant Gemini to help him plan a barbecue.
Wayne Rooney, whom Kane replaced as England’s record goalscorer, had his share of scandals. With Kane, there was never anything resembling a scandal. He has been married to his childhood sweetheart Kate for seven years and has four children.
David Beckham has a beautiful character, as recently stated in a hit show on Netflix. He was sent off at the 1998 World Cup for unnecessarily tackling Argentina’s Diego Simeone. Beckham was seen as a celebrity who did not live up to his talents. Salvation came with a free-kick against Greece in 2001 and a World Cup penalty against Argentina the following year. Although Beckham never captained England, these moments are timeless.
It seems an absurd thing to say about England’s all-time leading goalscorer, but for all his brilliance, there hasn’t really been a Harry Kane goal that has penetrated beyond the world of football and etched him into the public consciousness in the way his talent deserves. There are candidates, such as the curling header that put England 2-0 up against Germany at Wembley in 2021, en route to England’s first knockout victory over that old enemy since the 1966 World Cup final. But it was not a defining decade in the way of England’s previous moments.
His club career follows a similar pattern. He spent a decade at Tottenham Hotspur, becoming the club’s all-time top scorer for a brilliant side that always fell short in the big moments. There was no goal for Kane’s trophy because he never won anything at Spurs. In 2023 he left for Bayern Munich, who then had their first trophyless season in 12 years. Kane’s lack of trophies was becoming a meme. Maybe it was cursed.
He has now won two German titles and a German cup, even if the biggest prizes still elude him. While they put up absurd numbers for Bayern domestically, they have failed in the Champions League across Europe. Kane looked on the verge of tears when his side clashed with Paris Saint-Germain a few weeks ago.
He remains a curious figure in the age of the football individual as a world famous brand, like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe. Kane’s standout impression is that of a team player working for a collective, often superior to his teammates, but never angry at him.
There is no better example than England’s campaign at the World Cup in Qatar in 2022. Kane played a huge part in getting England there, scoring 12 goals in qualifying and helping England through to the quarter-finals against France, who scored an early goal. England were awarded a penalty and Kane slotted it, as he almost always does, to equal Wayne Rooney’s record of 53 England goals.
France scored again, then England were awarded another penalty, to equalize and put Kane at the top of England’s all-time goalscoring charts. But, in a very rare error, Kane sent the ball over the crossbar. England lost 2-1.
The tragedy of 2022 was not Kane’s miss; is that the miss may be the moment people remember most of his career, unless a new memory is made in North America this summer.
If Kane scores a decisive knockout goal – even, perhaps, in the final – he will go down as not just one of England’s best footballers, but the best ever, and a defining figure in the country’s post-war national history.
(Further reading: This could be my last World Cup)
