Harry Kane, the man that Spurs fans seem to have appointed the future of their beloved club. And who knows, maybe he is the future of the England team as well. It is currently February and Kane has managed 28 goals in all competitions, at only 21 his rise has been meteoric.
Kane has already gone through many different phases in his Spurs career. He went from a promising young player who was out on loan in the lower leagues, to a decent squad player for Spurs, to a player who was competing for a starting birth. But now, with the combination of him signing a new long term contract and being linked with a move to Real Madrid, Harry Kane has completed his transition to being a key player for Tottenham.
Spurs fans have taken to the England U-21 striker instantly, he has been at the club since the age of 11 and supporters take great pride in a home grown talent coming through the ranks and leading the team to glory. This kind of scenario has become somewhat of a fairytale for Premier League clubs with most relying on the instant gratification of the transfer market to bolster their squad.
Football is a results business and most managers don’t have the patience to breed young stars like this. Spurs in particular haven’t exactly been littered with promising home grown players during the Premier League era. In fact you could argue that Ledley King is their only significant self made player of the last two decades.
This has led to Spurs fans finding Kane’s emergence as a top player all the sweeter. And the calls of “He’s One Of Our Own” that greet Kane whenever he makes a contribution to a game are made so passionately as a result. The fact that this one player is labelled as one of their own further shows how scarce these home grown talents are in the Premier League.
Of course there has been much debate about how much of a Tottenham product Harry Kane is, with pictures doing the social media rounds at the moment of him as a child in his Arsenal shirt. Although this may not be the shocking revelation that the press claim it is.
Kane was actually part of the Arsenal set up for a year as an 8 year old and also spent two months at Watford. But I’m confident that anyone who was at White Hart Lane for the North London derby this weekend would have left the ground in no doubt as to where Kane’s loyalties lie. He scored twice in a 2-1 win for Spurs.
His rise to Premier League stardom could have come even earlier. A season long loan to Premier League new boys Norwich City for the 2012/13 season was cut short by injury, with the striker only making 3 appearances. But after this and other more successful loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall and Leicester City Kane was given his chance in the league for Spurs last season. He showed an eye for goal and scored 4 times for the North London club. But it is this season where Kane has really showed how much he has to his game.
After a few successful Europa League games he was given a more prominent role in the league in favour of misfiring strikers Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado. Of his 28 goals this season 13 have come in the league from just 21 appearances. He’s scored goals with his head as well as with both feet.
He’s played as a lone striker as well as in a deeper role behind the centre forward. He’s assisted as well as scored goals and is a physical presence together with being deceptively quick. As Match of the Day’s Danny Murphy pointed out, he doesn’t seem to have any glaring weaknesses in his game.
He’s still young, he’s learning, he’ll get a lot better yet. His claim that he was delighted with the ‘three points’ after a Capital One Cup win over Nottingham Forest earned him some light hearted banter from the Twitterverse while also serving as a reminder of how far Harry Kane has come in such a short space of time. He’s humble, hard working and his coaches say they see a passion for the game in him that is sadly lacking from so many young players who are solely in search of fame and fortune.
The future looks bright for Tottenham and England....and probably for Real Madrid too.