Is Harry Kane, Manchester United's record-breaking target, still undervalued?
Harry Kane has scored a million goals for Tottenham Hotspur. He is on the verge of breaking England's goalscoring record, and has been linked with a move to Manchester United.
Is Harry Kane, though, still underappreciated? Or, at the very least, undervalued?
Kane has scored 49 goals for England. This isn't breaking news or information.
All about the performance, World Cup preparations and good to see the young lads get their debuts. Delighted with the win and a goal as well. An honour to join @SirBobby Charlton on 49 goals. Hungry for more. 🦁🦁🦁 https://t.co/KTDPL5IqEr
Yet, it still feels like something that was shrugged off. Kane is a genuinely strange example of a modern elite footballer, as has been noted a hundred times before.
In certain places, he is over-rated – Luke Shaw, for example, called him the best striker in the world. In others, he is under-appreciated, if not under-rated.
Harry Kane deserves more recognition than he gets
When he was linked to Manchester City last summer, there was a lot of talk about whether they truly needed him and if the supporters wanted him. It seemed oddly rude, even considering City's undeniable quality.
Manchester United are interested in him, possibly in a dream squad reunion with Mauricio Pochettino. But the same reservations and uncertainties exist. It was one thing for City, who were and continue to be fantastic without him, and quite another for United, who are mediocre at best.
Kane's growing list of goal-scoring (and goal-creating) accomplishments is met with skepticism and, almost always, with caveats. It's not clear what he's won. He does, however, speak in a humorous manner. He does, however, continue to play for Spurs.
Kane, without a doubt, can cut a slightly guileless figure. The way he talked about goalscoring in his early interviews and how eager he was to steal goals from teammates did color opinions.
All he did was say the quiet part loudly; all strikers think that way, but most don't talk that way, as Kane has discovered. "At the end of the day, the three points are the most important" and so on.
But while he has grown up in that regard, his bumbling attempts to get out of Tottenham last summer demonstrated that ignorance still exists.
Another act that does not scream great footballer is having his brother as an agent. He simply does not resemble the image of an exceptional modern footballer that we have in mind. He doesn't have a polished image.
Impediments to greater recognition for Kane
Harry Kane is not a member of the proper team. He doesn't have the correct backstory, which, possibly, is a big part of the problem.
Kane is neither the underdog success story of a player rising from the depths of non-league football, nor the otherworldly youthful genius destined for greatness from the age of 12.
He's merely a striker who came out of a huge club academy relatively unnoticed and turned out to be far better than anyone thought. People's hesitation to properly credit him is undoubtedly due to the fact that they made up their minds about him a long time ago.
United fans having the audacity to say no to HARRY KANE is too funny, we're shittt
There are considerably more significant real-world examples of this phenomenon available right now. Also, Kane's reputation as a 'one-season wonder' persists.
Even now, he doesn't exactly look or feel like a world-class footballer, at least not until he performs yet another world-class performance. For example, his now widely-recognized artistic side was always present.
That passing skill has always been a part of his game, but it wasn't recognized until it became completely unavoidable. Prior to that, Kane's reputation as a greedy, diving, goal-hanging penalty merchant blinded people to the truth of the player he was.
People now routinely complain about him dropping too far to get on the ball and look to create opportunities for runners beyond him. They say things like, "Kane needs to be getting on the end of those kinds of balls himself," oblivious to the fact that Harry Kane does it all the time.
The 28-year-old has scored 49 goals for England! We'll say it again and again until it sinks in.
Kane's creative side has increased as he's matured and perfected his game over the years, but it's not a new aspect of his game.
His symbiotic relationship with Son Heung-min existed before Christian Eriksen's departure from Spurs. His equivalent bond with peak Dele Alli, on the other hand, was exclusively handled in the company of Eriksen.
Kane's astonishing record
Kane's already absurd club goalscoring achievements are simpler to disregard than his England record. There, his lack of silverware is a more valid complaint.
However, if failure to win big trophies counts against England's goal scorers, we'll be left with a tiny number of candidates.
The English striker's record ranks him among the top goal scorers his country has ever produced in any category. He'll be an undeniable number one by the time he calls it a day, but you can bet that won't stop people from trying to discredit him.
At the very least, statistically, Harry Kane is already England's best striker. Unless something dramatic happens, he'll easily break Wayne Rooney's existing record of 53 goals, and his goal-per-minute record is incredible.
Only Jimmy Greaves (117 minutes per goal) comes close to Kane's record of 109 minutes per goal, among England players with 40 or more goals. Only Nat Lofthouse can beat them among those with 30 or more.
Does Kane score more against weak opposition?
Goals against pitiful opposition are both true and unimportant; this is international football, not league football. Their identities may change, but there have always been bad teams and excellent teams.
In club football, good clubs have always played a disproportionate amount of games against bad teams. Harry Kane has scored a lot of his international goals against weak opponents, but that's the nature of international football.
You'd have a hard time arguing that more than a third of Rooney's England goals came against decent opposition if you looked at the list.
Gary Lineker scored two hat-tricks against a Turkish team from 1980s that has little to do with their current rankings and five goals against New Zealand and Malaysia in the summer of 1991.
This is not a criticism; it is simply the truth.
It should come as no surprise that good strikers score more against bad teams than against excellent teams. International sport provides plenty of opportunities for that.
It's always been like that.
In Kane's situation, the Nations League has lessened its impact, as he is now pitted against superior opponents more frequently in 'qualifying' matches. He has also scored more goals in big tournaments than any other England player in history.
Despite all of the reasonable criticisms of his performances in major games, he still managed to score in the last 16, quarter-finals, and semi-finals in tournament conditions.
Kane is also one of the top penalty-takers in the world. This is used as a critique for some reason, given their general importance and England's checkered history.
Perhaps Kane's transfer to Manchester United will change the narrative in his favor. Despite their current woes, they remain a club more deserving of a world-class player in the public eye.
They're more likely to polarize things even more as Harry Kane becomes the first major fraud to score the most goals in both England and the Premier League.