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Harry Kane has grown into the best English number nine since Alan Shearer

Kane kept retained the Golden Boot thanks to a goal glut late in the season. Seven goals in his final two games saw him finish with 29 goals from just 30 games - including four hat-tricks.
Kane kept retained the Golden Boot thanks to a goal glut late in the season. Seven goals in his final two games saw him finish with 29 goals from just 30 games – including four hat-tricks.

There’s something distinctly retro about Harry Kane. Maybe it’s that his name makes him sound like a handlebar-moustached star of the 1920s, playing football in between shifts at the rail-yard, or that his dialect and manner isn’t exactly in keeping with a Premier League footballer of his stature. Mainly, though, it’s Kane’s game that makes him something of a throwback – even if he does wear the wrong number on his back.

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The archetypal number nine might be something of a dying breed in the modern game, but Kane encapsulates everything that saw their type dominate an entire era of the English game. The late 1990s saw the Premier League flooded with world-class goal-getting English number nines – Andy Cole, Teddy Sheringham, Ian Wright and Les Ferdinand were just a few of those who graced the game during this period.

Of course, they all paled in comparison to Alan Shearer. He set the precedent for homegrown frontmen, still holding the record for scoring the most Premier League goals in history. Nobody has come close to reaching the standard set by the former Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers striker. Until Kane that is.

Sunday’s hat-trick against Hull City – his fifth, sixth and seventh goals in two games – saw Kane end the season on 99 Tottenham goals, underlining the reputation he is building for himself as the world-class talent that defines Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur side. He, not Wayne Rooney, not Michael Owen, not anyone else, is the best archetypal English number nine since Shearer.

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It’s in the way he leads the line for Spurs, with the ball drawn to him no matter where he is in the box, just as was the case with Shearer, providing a sort of spiritual leadership for everyone else across the frontline. He does it for England too, giving the national team an extra dimension they lack when Kane isn’t involved. It’s an intangible, almost unexplainable, quality.

Not so long ago Kane was written off as little more than a one-season-wonder, scoring 32 goals in his breakthrough season in 2014/15, only to go eight games into the next season without finding the net. He went on to finish the 2015/16 campaign with exactly the same tally (32). He finished this campaign with 37 from 47 appearances. A comparison with Shearer is more than warranted.

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“He is one of the best,” Pochettino said after Spurs 4-0 win over Stoke in February. “I am pleased for him. He deserves [his success], he is very professional, a top man and I’m happy. It is not new for me, I have said many times that for me he is one of the best strikers in the world. He has the perfect profile to be a legend here. He has his character. Sometimes he argues with me, sometimes he’s upset with me, sometimes he’s happy. He has a strong character. He showed his personality today.”

Indeed, just like Shearer, Kane is on track to become a bona fide legend of the Premier League. He might soon find himself at something of a career juncture, with clubs like Manchester United rumoured to be circling in their search for a successor to Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Shearer experienced the same thing at Blackburn Rovers, choosing to join his boyhood team rather than signing for United. Kane could be faced with a similar dilemma.

Regardless, great players define great teams and Kane has strayed into that territory at Spurs. Pochettino is building something special at White Hart Lane, and it’s not a new stadium. The club has become a Premier League superpower, challenging for titles while playing the most exhilarating brand of football in the English game right now. Kane is integral to the whole thing.

That might be where the difference between Kane and Shearer is one day found. Shearer, for all that he was a great, never fulfilled his potential in the way of silverware, with the league title he won with Blackburn in 1995 the only time he ever got his hands on a major trophy. Kane is the best English number nine since Shearer, but in this respect he could prove to be even better.