In my humble opinion, a world-class footballer is among the top three or four in the world at his position. He consistently produces high-quality performances. Per this definition, Harry Kane is a world class striker.
We seem to say Harry Kane is in the goalscoring form of his life every season, but as of now, he truly is. The man has scored 13 goals in September, firing himself amongst the top scorers in Europe. If it weren’t for his nationality, the Englishman would have been labelled world class ages ago, but now he’s taken that label by force.
Here’s why Harry Kane is a world class striker.
After a brace on the weekend against Huddersfield, every football fan on the planet is talking about the exploits of Harry Kane. He may not be the quickest, the strongest or the most technical, but he’s thus proved himself to be the most prolific. The Englishman even delivered for his country on Thursday to help them secure World Cup qualification. There’s nothing the man can’t do.
As of today, Harry Kane is Europe’s 2nd top scorer with 36 goals in 31 apps, only behind Lionel Messi himself. Here are the top 6 goalscorers of 2017 so far:
- Lionel Messi: 43
- Harry Kane: 36
- Edinson Cavani: 35
- Robert Lewandowski: 34
- Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: 33
- Cristiano Ronaldo: 31
However, Lionel Messi has played 12 more games than Kane this season, meaning the Englishman could have easily made up ground in that time. That’s backed up by the fact that he has the best strike rate in Europe’s top 5 leagues of 1.16goals/game compared to Messi (1.05) and Cristiano Ronaldo’s is 0.91. The scary thing is, he didn’t even score a goal in August, so what did he do? Score thirteen in September just to make up for it.
Just to put this into perspective, Harry Kane has scored more goals in all competitions this year than; Watford, West Brom, Burnley, Stoke City, Crystal Palace, Swansea and Southampton. Kane’s exploits only become more wondrous the deeper you go into the stats.
The 24-year old’s hattrick against APOEL was his seventh of 2017, in that time, Sergio Aguero, Romelu Lukaku & Alvaro Morata have each only scored one. Even Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have only scored two hattricks each this calendar year.
FACT: Harry Kane has scored 110 goals in his Tottenham Career.
The main criticism of Harry Kane has been his inability to perform on stages outside of the Premier League. However, in two Champions League games this season, Harry Kane has scored 5 goals, averaging 32 minutes per goal. Two of those goals came against the best team in Germany, Borussia Dortmund. So, you can’t argue that the Englishman is stat-padding either, he’s performing on the biggest stage against the best of teams.
Harry Kane is only the fourth player in Premier League history to score 20 goals in three successive seasons. And the way he’s started the fourth, he’s set to continue to that streak. For the first time, we have a world-class English striker. Embrace it.
