Harry Kane has drawn level with Peter Shilton as England’s most-capped player, making his 125th appearance for the national team against the Czech Republic in the Nations League on Tuesday. In doing so he equals a record Shilton has held for 36 years as the most-capped Three Lions player.
The Bayern Munich striker is already his country’s record goalscorer, with 89 goals in 124 appearances. His full international career began in emphatic fashion, opening his account 79 seconds into his debut. Kane may be 33, but he remains a key player for both club and country.
His route to that milestone began at six years old, when he arrived for trials with Ridgeway Rovers in 1999 – a youth side that a generation earlier had produced David Beckham. Rovers thought they had found themselves a new goalkeeper. Dave Bricknell, a former coach at the club, recalled a shooting session in which he asked for a lad to go in goal. “This little boy puts his hand up and says: ‘I’ll go in goal.’ We give him some gloves, and he performs heroics – makes some fantastic saves. He’s tipping it round the post, tipping a couple over the bar,” Bricknell said. “I’m thinking this is great, we’ve got a goalkeeper. And then this woman came up to me and said he’s better on the pitch. We put him on pitch and he smacked goals in left, right and centre. So he ends up being our centre forward.”
Kane’s prolific form for Ridgeway Rovers and his Waltham Forest district side caught the attention of professional scouts. Arsenal initially snapped up the youngster but decided not to keep him, while Watford also passed up the opportunity to sign him. Trevor Bailey, Kane’s manager at Waltham Forest, described a player who could be quiet for long spells but ruthless when it mattered. “Harry could have done nothing all game, but if that chance came up it was in the onion bag. He was always on the move up front. When he got a chance, guaranteed four out of five he was going to score or set someone up,” Bailey said. Alex Welsh, a former academy coach at Arsenal, believes Kane’s early grounding as a goalkeeper shaped the finisher he became. “I first met Harry in the academy and he was a very competent goalkeeper, but his real desire was to score goals. I am absolutely convinced that is the reason why he is such a clinical striker – he intuitively knows what the goalkeeper doesn’t like. He shoots early when the goalkeeper’s not set,” Welsh said. Bricknell added that he believed Kane was second top-scorer at Arsenal behind Benik Afobe before the club decided at 11 years of age that they did not want him anymore.
Away from football, Kane attended Larkswood Primary Academy before moving to Chingford Foundation School, where he was inevitably the star of the football team – but he also impressed his teachers across the board. Mark Leadon, his PE teacher, remembered a technically gifted and clever player who was also a good cricketer, opening the bowling from year seven to 10 and batting at four or five. “He was never a prima donna, and he would always put a shift in. What came through more than anything else was his determination to succeed. That work ethic was clear,” Leadon said. Childhood friend and team-mate Luke Robinson recalled a boy whose mind was only ever on football. “We used to have a laugh, a couple of games of Fifa, but he was always driven. He’d always keep himself to himself. He loved David Beckham, he came in with the Mohican, everyone was laughing but he loved it. He loved football, 24/7, he lived and breathed football.”
It was Tottenham Hotspur who offered Kane hope after his earlier disappointments, though he was by no means the pick of his age group. His desire to learn endeared him to the academy staff and he signed scholarship terms with the club on his 16th birthday in July 2009. Alex Inglethorpe, a former Tottenham youth-team coach, was candid about how Kane was viewed initially. “When I joined Spurs as under-18 coach, Harry was 13. I’d like to say he was the gold medallist in the group and we’d all spotted he was going to be the fantastic player, but I’d be lying. He probably wasn’t even on the podium,” he said. “If there was something that endeared him to you it was that he was very, very low maintenance. It became fairly evident when Harry became a scholar he was someone who could finish. He was wonderfully demanding to coach because he always wanted to stay out and do extra. That obsession to improve is undoubtedly his greatest strength.” Inglethorpe said it was around the age of 16 that Kane began having an impact on the youth team, trusted to come off the bench and change games from a range of positions.
Senior football arrived through the loan system. Kane went to League One Leyton Orient, making his professional debut in January 2011 at Rochdale, coming on for veteran striker Scott McGleish, and scored five times in nine starts. “Harry was not like other Premier League players, where you feel they’re going to come in ‘Billy Big Time’. He wanted the experience of learning what I call men’s football,” McGleish said, describing a slight but technically excellent 17-year-old who was ready to fight for his place. A loan to Championship strugglers Millwall followed in January 2012, where Kane’s nine goals helped save Kenny Jackett’s side from relegation. Former Millwall defender Alan Dunne said the atmosphere at the Den did not faze him. “I’ve seen a lot of players come to the Den and freeze, because within five minutes they’re being called names they’ve never heard before and they can’t cope with that pressure. But it didn’t faze him – he was a focused lad, he was confident in his ability,” Dunne said. Tim Sherwood, the former Tottenham manager, recalled a scout telling then-Spurs boss Harry Redknapp that Kane needed to be taken out of Millwall. “I went straight in and said: ‘This is the perfect atmosphere for him,'” Sherwood said.
After making his Premier League debut for Tottenham in August 2012, Kane was sent on loan again. The 19-year-old made only three top-flight appearances for Norwich because of injury, and then had a spell at Leicester where he and future England team-mate Jamie Vardy struggled for regular starts. After four loan spells in three seasons, Kane spent the entire 2013-14 campaign with Tottenham, but it was not until April – after Andre Villas-Boas had been sacked and replaced by Sherwood – that a 20-year-old Kane was handed his first Premier League start for Spurs. He scored his first top-flight goal in that game against Sunderland and netted again in the following two matches against West Brom and Fulham. “It didn’t feel a gamble at all to give Harry that start. It was almost overdue to be honest,” Sherwood said, explaining that Kane was outperforming Roberto Soldado every day in training. “I was the biggest believer Harry Kane ever had, because I used to think he was a mix between Teddy Sheringham and Alan Shearer.”
Kane never looked back after scoring 21 top-flight goals the following season and earning his first England call-up in March 2015. He ended up as Tottenham’s all-time top scorer with 280 goals in 435 appearances, along with three Premier League Golden Boots, but without a trophy. Pep Guardiola, the then Manchester City boss who tried to sign him, said in 2023: “What an exceptional player – the numbers and, more than the goals, the quality. Harry Kane remains one of the best strikers I have ever seen in my life.” Former Spurs team-mate Son Heung-min called him “leader, brother, legend”, adding: “Since day one it has been a joy to play by your side.” Then Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou said Kane had left “an indelible mark at this football club” and would go down as one of the greats.
The only thing missing from Kane’s CV was trophies, and in 2023 he joined Bayern Munich, where he has continued to impress. He has scored 152 goals in 154 games for the club, won the Bundesliga Golden Boot three times and claimed two German titles and a German Cup. Former Bayern defender Lothar Matthaus said Kane had reinvented the centre-forward game much as Manuel Neuer did with goalkeeping. “I don’t see a better striker in the world right now. Not just because of his goals, but because of his versatility and the positions he plays,” Matthaus said, noting Kane’s qualities as a passer, dribbler and tackler. Ex-England striker Alan Shearer, speaking this summer, said Kane looked fitter and stronger than before, adding: “Those numbers are just ridiculous.” BBC pundit Chris Sutton said Kane has to be in the bracket when discussing the world’s best, arguing that “Harry Kane has instincts that are simply uncoachable”.
Some of the interviews featured in the retrospective were first published in 2016.