IS KANE REALLY THE GOAT?

BIG DEBATE

HARRY KANE became Tottenham’s all-time record scorer with his strike against Manchester City making it club goal No.267 and taking him past Jimmy Greaves.

He is also joint England record-scorer with Wayne Rooney. Is he now the country’s greatest striker? Our reporters debate the issue.

ANDY DUNN

IT should go without saying that being the most prolific striker does not make you the best striker.

You would be hard-pressed to find any Spurs-watchers from the 1960s – or footballwatchers in general from that era – who would rank Kane above Greaves in their all-time pecking order.

He is up there, for sure, and will set a formidable international goals record, but, again, it depends how you quantify greatness.

Getting a hat-trick in a

World Cup final, for example, must earn you extra points.

There are contenders for the greatest-ever tag who few of us saw in the flesh – fabled strikers such as Nat Lofthouse and, of course, Dixie Dean.

So, rather than make a judgement on figures or footage, this one is on the evidence of my own eyes.

And on that evidence, Rooney still gets the nod, ahead of Kane, who will probably go past the former Manchester United man’s Three Lions scoring mark next month.

For me, as well as being a spectacular finisher, Rooney brought just that little bit more to the game and was instrumental in his club winning a raft of trophies.

Kane is great but Rooney was just that little bit better.

MIKE WALTERS

TREMENDOUS player, a walking billboard for making the most of your attributes and a decent bloke.

But England’s greatest-ever striker? Come off it – Kane is not even the greatest in

Tottenham’s history. Statistically, yes, Kane has gone past Greaves as the club’s most prolific goalscorer of all time.

Not even the coldest heart would begrudge him a place in the record books.

And His Harryship’s captaincy of England has taken the Three Lions to a World Cup semi-final, the Euro 2020 final and a hairline defeat in the last eight in Qatar two months ago.

Can’t be bad.

There is, however, a difference between breaking records, wearing armbands and greatness.

Kane has yet to win a trophy with Tottenham.

Greaves joined Spurs just after they had won The

Double in 1961, but he still won three cups with them.

And don’t fall for the flawed yardstick that Kane is now closing in on Alan Shearer’s ‘record’ of 260 Premier League goals.

In all, Greaves scored 357 goals in English football’s top flight with Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham before Andy Gray and Richard Keys invented football in 1992 – and he retired at just 31.

Greaves was a pioneer, the first striker who skipped past defenders as if he was wearing roller skates where everyone else was stomping around in hob-nailed boots.

JAMES NURSEY

KANE is a recordbreaker and the only certainty is he will continue to break more records.

He deserves all the acclaim Tottenham rightly bestowed on him for grafting his way to the top of the game.

Kane, 29, is a huge talent but he didn’t always look like one when I saw him on loan at Norwich a decade ago in a forgettable spell in which he failed to score.

Yet he has learned from setbacks and just worked even harder to first break into the Spurs side, then England’s, before establishing himself as captain of his country, too.

Kane is such a clean-living, admirable professional who deserves all he gets.

Few would dispute he is one the best strikers in the world

after 53 goals for England. Next he must surely have Shearer’s Premier League record of 260 in his sights as he now sits is on 200.

He has, however, not won a team trophy in his career yet.

But if there is any justice Kane will lift major silverware before his time is up.

Irrespective of that, he will go down as England’s bestever striker and have the stats to back it up.

NEIL MCLEMAN

IS Harry Kane now England’s best-ever striker? No.

He may have overtaken

Jimmy Greaves as Tottenham’s top goalscorer, but other numbers say his Spurs predecessor is, for now, still the best England striker.

Greaves remains the top goalscorer in the top flight with 357 between 1957 and 1971 for Chelsea, Tottenham and West Ham.

And though he is now fifth in the Three Lions’ all-time goalscorers, his strike rate of 44 goals in 57 games (0.77 per game) is above the four men ahead of him – Kane (53 in 80 at 0.66 per game), Rooney, Bobby Charlton and Gary Lineker. Injury kept Greaves out of the latter stages at the 1966 World Cup and West Ham’s Geoff Hurst took his chance to write his name in history with a hat-trick in the final.

Greaves, who passed away in 2021 aged 81, still holds the record of SIX hat-tricks for his country. He never won a major trophy with England or the league title here, but continued to star in the game after his retirement on TV’S Saint and Greavsie.

A class act on and off the pitch.

DARREN LEWIS

IMPRESSIVE? Yes. A Spurs legend? Absolutely. England’s best-ever? Even Kane would not lay claim to that.

How can he when he has never lifted a trophy? How can he when Shearer won the title with Blackburn and Rooney plundered five of them and the Champions League with Manchester United?

Even Greaves, the man whose record Kane surpassed, was a World Cup winner.

Kane’s goals have kept Spurs competitive but do not elevate him to that level.

The England captain’s escape bid two years ago was an attempt to address that with Manchester City, ironically, waiting with open arms at the time.

Now that the power is in his hands, with a year left on his contract, Kane could look to lift himself up alongside the trophy-winning giants.

DAVID MADDOCK

NO. Not even close. Greaves, whose Spurs record he has just surpassed, was better.

Time is the redactor in chief to past football stars’ reputations, editing their brilliance with faded memories. But the stats still endure. Greaves still has more league goals for Spurs, and still holds the all time top-flight record, with 357.

Kane is miles behind that record on 200 in the league, and it’s hard to see him getting close. He’s already played 11 seasons in the top flight, while Greaves managed 15 in his career.

And if we’re talking history, then Dixie Dean is head and shoulders above the rest of the forwards to represent England.

He scored, wait for it, 310 top-flight goals in 360 Everton appearances, a goals to games ratio of 0.86… light years ahead of anyone else.

Add in the goals Dean scored in helping the Toffees win promotion back into the First Division in 1930-31 – when he stayed loyal, despite relegation and countless offers to leave – he produced 349 goals in 399 league games, a ratio of 0.88.

Dean played only 11 seasons in the top flight, the same as Kane has already managed.

That’s 110 more league goals in the same period. He also scored 60 league goals (and 82 in all competitions) during the 1927-28 title-winning season. That record will NEVER be surpassed.

Dean was, without doubt, England’s greatest striker.

Yet he received only 16 caps despite scoring 18 goals in those games, a ratio of 1.1 per game… far better than even Greaves. Why so few? Politics.

Perhaps even a hint of racism wound up in the inference of his nickname.

Whatever, he deserves now to be recognised as the best there ever was in our game.