Ronaldo on top of world again
REPORTS FORGET Alan Shearer. Harry Kane has his eyes locked on Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as he chases down his immediate target of scoring 50 goals in a calendar year.
The two that helped sink Liverpool 4-1 on Sunday took Kane’s 2017 total to 45, and although likely to be rested for tomorrow’s Carabao Cup clash with West Ham, there is plenty of time to smash through that particular milestone.
“Fifty would be nice,” said Kane. “We will see. There are plenty of games to go, a lot of tough games coming up. As I’ve said before I feel confident.
“We’ve got plenty of tough games and we’ll need to play like that to get good results.
“A lot of hard work goes into it, so to be up there in numbers and there is still plenty of time left this year, so let’s see where we can go and how far I can get up and go from there.” He now sits on 86 Premier League goals from only 125 appearances and already many people are talking about him becoming the greatest Premier League goalscorer of all time.
Shearer currently enjoys that status with 260 goals, but on Sunday evening the former Blackburn and Newcastle legend tweeted: “He’s coming for me, he’s coming for meeeeeee, @HKane he’s coming for me!”
More pertinently, Shearer’s record of scoring 36 Premier League goals in a single calendar year, Blackburn’s title-winning year of 1995, is already under threat. Kane has 29 now with 12 games, potentially, to make up the shortfall.
But Kane is so confident he is already looking at a much wider picture: 38 strikes in all competitions for Tottenham and seven for England this year put him right up there with Europe’s elite.
At the same time, if you include the Spanish Super Cup, Messi recently completed his half-century while Ronaldo, with 44 goals this year, is already in Kane’s wake. Kane makes no apologies for taking two of the game’s most decorated individuals as his benchmark.
“I’ve told you before, at some stage I want to be the best player in the world and to do that you have to be up there with these players,” he said.
“They set the standards, Ronaldo and Messi, so for the rest of us it’s about trying to catch them and get up there.”
When you consider Kane’s injury problems earlier in the year, he has spent considerably less time on the pitch than either of the two players who share nine Ballon d’Ors between them. As a result, his goals have taken on average just 75 minutes to arrive, while you have to wait over 90 for a Messi or a Ronaldo strike.
Kane, though, remains as humble as ever. “While the numbers are good, for me it’s more important to be winning these big games against big teams,” he said.
“It shows we are coming together as a team and getting better. That’s the most important thing. We will see where we finish at the end of the year but it’s always my aim to be up there with the very best.”
To that end, Kane was honoured to be introduced to Diego Maradona before the game at Wembley on Sunday and says he took inspiration from the man who singlehandedly – quite literally at one point – won the 1986 World Cup for Argentina.
“He was such a down-toearth, great guy,” said Kane. “That’s what it’s about, meeting these people, just feeling their good positive vibes and using that in my game, taking it onto the pitch.
“He didn’t speak much English, and was just speaking in Spanish so I didn’t really understand what he was saying.
“But he was very energetic and said some nice compliments – not just to me but to the team and to the manager. It was great to be in the company of someone like that. What a player he was, I can only learn from someone like him.” STARS of world football gathered in London last night as Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo was named FIFA men’s player of the year.
It was the second consecutive time the Real Madrid forward had won the award and the fifth time overall.
The FIFA awards, at the London Palladium, saw Zinedine Zidane edge out Chelsea’s Antonio Conte as coach of the year. Gianluigi Buffon was named best goalkeeper after helping Juventus to a sixth seuccessive Serie A title and recording 600 Champions League minutes without conceding a goal.
And Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud won the FIFA Puskas Award for goal of the year, for his ‘scorpion-kick’ scored against Crystal Palace in January.