CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL
Pochettino faces a massive call over starting Harry Kane tonight
HARRY KAne still remembers the first professional goal he ever scored. It was a first- time shot at the far post for Leyton Orient against Sheffield Wednesday in January 2011.
‘I will never forget that one,’ Kane told this newspaper two seasons ago.
On loan from Tottenham, a career of any sorts in the game seemed the limit of his horizons at that time. And though he did receive some subsequent support from Tottenham managers Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood, the man who he really has to thank for his emergence at the highest level is the man who faces the biggest decision of all ahead of tonight’s Champions League final.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool team virtually picks itself. Mauricio Pochettino, on the other hand, must decide whether he has the courage to leave out the player he more than anyone has moulded into the most feared centre forward in england.
Kane is technically fit to play. After suffering an ankle injury against Manchester City in April, he has been confident enough to run straight lines in training for some time. In recent days he has joined in full contact sessions and has even publicly declared himself available.
But to be fit is not to be match fit. Kane has missed nine matches and is thought of at the club as a player who needs two or three games to find his levels again after time out. Tonight in Spain it will be nudging 30oC at kick-off.
So a certain logic would suggest that Kane begins on the bench but since when did top sportsmen adhere to logic? Moreover, this is Pochettino’s Jose Mourinho moment, his opportunity to use the greatest club competition in football to elevate himself to the very top tier of european coaches.
If Pochettino can upset Liverpool, he will becomeme the most powerful coach oach Tottenham have ever ver had. His bargaining ng power with chairman - Daniel Levy would shift irrecoverably and should he wish to move on — something he has hinted at recently — his status would become e blue chip overnight. .
On the contrary, iff he becomes the coachh who lost the european CCup fifinal l with his best player left on the bench then that leaves a different kind of impression altogether.
‘It is not easy,’ said Pochettino last night. ‘We have all the information, we know every detail, these decisions are painful. It is a tough decision but it is my job.’
Whatever Pochettino is thinking, Klopp would like to know and so would Kane himself. Sources who spoke to the player before training yesterday revealed that he had not been told the line-up. Certainly Tottenham are a different team with Kane playing and the perceived wisdom after training was that he would start.
Spurs play a different way, more direct, with the england captain in the side and he has hurt Liverpool before, most notably when orchestrating a 4-1 win at Wembley in October 2017 and converting a late penalty when the teams drew a controversial game 2-2 at Anfield later that season.
‘You have to have big balls to do that,’ was Pochettino’s assessment of his star player that day.
That game was the first time Kane had come up against a Liverpool team with Virgil van Dijk in it, indeeindeed the Dutchman conceconceded that penalty. LiveLiverpool are a much bebetter defensive teteam — the best in tthe Premier League — now that Van Dijk is involved but Tottenham feel he can be ddragged out of pposition by balls in bebehind his team’s full backs, something that would leave Kane space in which to work up againstit JoelJ Matip, a player he was worried previously.
Last night as he spoke at the Wanda Metropolitano, Klopp did not attempt to choose Pochettino’s team for him. Previously he has said of Kane this year: ‘What a fantastic striker. It is difficult for one defender alone to stop a world class striker like him.’
It says much for Tottenham’s progress this season that Pochettino even has a decision to make. Had this game taken place a year ago there would have been no question that Kane would have been straight in the team. Pep Guardiola subsequently apologised for calling Spurs the ‘Harry Kane team’ in 2017 but at the time it felt as though the Manchester City manager had a point.
now they are less reliant on him. The continued growth of Son Heung-min, the emergence of the Brazilian Lucas Moura and even the peculiar nuisance value of Fernando Llorente have given Spurs a dangerous look whether Kane is in the team or not.
In his absence, for example, Pochettino’s side scored 14 times, Moura’s hat-trick in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final at Ajax being the most notable individual contribution.
It is thought Moura will be the one to miss out and that would be desperately harsh on the Brazilian. The 26- year- old has been Tottenham’s form player towards the back end of the season.
Regardless, Tottenham should play without pressure and they should use that to their advantage. This feels like a european final Tottenham can hope to win while Liverpool must do so if they are not to become known as serial runners-up under Klopp.
Kane trained fully last night and looked for all the world as though he is ready to play in the biggest club game of his life. A goalscorer accustomed to big occasions, last summer’s World Cup golden boot winner would not take kindly to being asked to begin among the substitutes.
When Pochettino removed the combustible emmanuel Adebayor from the Tottenham side to make room for an up- and- coming Kane at home to Stoke City in november 2014, his team lost 2-1. ‘That was a brave move,’ Kane subsequently reflected.
Tonight Pochettino faces a much bigger call. Regardless of the pain, the Tottenham manager is unlikely to have lost any sleep over making it.