Harry Kane, England’s unstarry superstar, should be loved a little more
Kane #Kane
There have been many great pictures of Kevin Keegan down the decades, so many it can be hard to choose a favourite.
Perhaps you’re a fan of haunted managerial Kev, damp-eyed, lip trembling, pursued by invisible furies. You might prefer mid-70s “Mighty Mouse” Kev: hands on hips, wrapped in a belted trench coat from his own Harry Denton gentswear collection, and looking like the kind cologne-drenched puppyish junior executive who stands slightly too close to you in the lift.
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My own favourite is probably the famous picture from the England team hotel at the 1982 World Cup, where Keegan is sitting on the shoulders of Ray Wilkins, dressed in a tiny pair of satin shorts, arms raised above his head in an attitude of triumph.
In the picture the tiny satin shorts have ridden up between Keegan’s thighs, giving the impression at first glance that he’s naked from the waist down. There he is: a small, intense, grinning man, celebrating with clenched fists as the head of Ray Wilkins rises from his groin like a miraculous, frowning pudendum. Either side of this 10-foot incubus Bryan Robson and Peter Shilton pose supportively, like game but frightened parents.
Days later Keegan made what would turn out to be his final England appearance in the tournament-ending draw with Spain in Madrid. But it was also a game that provided another great Keegan picture as he wandered off sadly at the final whistle, shoulders slumped, icon of an oddly comforting kind of English sporting sorrow.
It is a process that has attached itself repeatedly to England strikers down the years, a tendency for grand, often extended celebrity exits. There is an arc to this, from early promise, to the peak years, to a parting of the ways that is prolonged, deliciously painful, and bound up with an innate refusal to accept its passing.
Alan Shearer seemed to spend the last two years of his England career walking backwards with his arms outstretched, like a man in search of the bathroom light switch. A large part of Michael Owen’s England career reads like a fond, painful extended farewell. Wayne Rooney was very good for a long time, but lingered on in those final years like an over-ripe grapefruit at the bottom of the fruit bowl.
There is a reason for talking about this now. There have been signs something similar is attaching itself to Harry Kane, that the exit music is already beginning to chime, albeit unfairly, and prematurely.
It has been a good week for Kane as he edges his way back after a fourth serious injury in three years. He scored twice at Newcastle, both close-range headers, the second of which involved hurling himself through the chest of a Newcastle defender like an action-movie stuntman being machine-gunned through a plate glass window.
Kane now has 200 club goals. It is also a year now, as of last week, until the end of the rescheduled Euro 2020, a tournament that feels like a personal mission for Kane; not just the trophy he seems closest to actually winning, but an obvious summit moment in an England career that clearly means a great deal to him.
Still, though, it should come as no surprise that the talk now is of a perceived physical decline rather than continuing excellence in a poor club team. Kane has never been a fashionable Extremely Good Footballer. Even in his best periods there is talk of flukes, penalties, goal-hanging and all the rest (despite the fact he regularly plays as No 10, No 4, No 8, and No 11 all in the same game).
And once again there seems to be a will to accelerate that process of decline, to see a familiar kind of over-ripeness, a talent that has exhausted itself, that has already become a little gamey.
This is obviously premature: Kane is 26. It also overlooks just how good he is, a player many see as overrated, but who is in fact the opposite of this. Even in an injury-blighted season Kane has 31 goals in 38 appearances for club and country, a better ratio than Sergio Agüero, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané, every striker at Manchester United and – yes – Lionel Messi; none of whom are currently also the best midfielder, centre‑back and creative passer in a Europa League‑bound José-vehicle.
As for England, well there has been some talk of new, exciting, more mobile forwards emerging, and a fear that Kane, a more dogged presence, might somehow become a clog in the Southgate revolution. It is an argument worth considering right up until the moment you take a look and notice Kane has 27 goals in his last 28 England games.
The reality is English football has a phenomenon on its hands here, a sporting property to be cherished, and perhaps also to be loved a little more. Indeed, it is Kane’s basic oddity as a superstar footballer that is his most likeable quality. This is a global scoring phenomenon with no obvious outsized skills or physical attributes, who does not play for a dynastic club, was never a teenage prodigy.
Kane’s sole remarkable qualities are nerve, determination and fearlessness, an athlete whose achievements shout as loud as any that talent is overrated, that brains and character are what really make the difference, that to be an unstarry superstar is still to be a superstar.
For all that, it may still be a short career given the way Kane has played always with the throttle stamped to the floor, burning through those peak years with a careless zeal. But there is still a chance to wring a little more out of himself, perhaps to test his talent in a team he doesn’t have to carry on his shoulders; and either way to seek out an unlikely high-end second phase, to what is already a thrillingly unlikely high-end career.
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