DON’T BURN OUT HARRY!
Kane needs rest before World Cup
HARRY KANE had a phenomenal 2017 and as a Spurs man I couldn’t have been more delighted.
The way I would sum up the impact he has as a striker is by saying :‘ If Harry…’ ‘If Harry chases the ball down the like that …’ ‘If Harry lives his life off the field like that….’ ‘ If Harry stays after training like that….’
Sometimes you can have a star player who is a bit of a prima donna. The defenders can end up saying: ‘Well, if he t racked back and worked properly, we wouldn’t have so much to deal with.’
But no one’s got that excuse with Harry. He is a coach’s dream. If he works as hard as he does to win the ball back, as the best player in the team, then there’s no excuse for anyone else.
He scores but he also creates and often he’s making chances by harrying defenders into mistakes, which his teammates benefit from.
He’s an inspiration for kids, having come through those tough loan-moves and got into the team. He’s fought for everything he’s achieved. He has everything: left foot, right foot, good head for goal, work-rate, enough speed and an understanding of when to move. If you built a robot, you would have all those attributes in there. And if a centre-half is worth now £ 75 million, how much is he worth? It would have to be somewhere approaching Neymar’s fee of £200m.
There’s only one fear I have. He had a really good season in 2015-16 but had run out of gas by Euro 2016. Even in the pretournament friendlies against Portugal and Turkey you could see he didn’t have a run in him. And no player, not even Lionel Messi, can play like that.
I was pleased he at least got something of a rest against Swansea during the hectic Christmas period, even if that was because he was carrying a cold. He will probably get another break today when Spurs take on Wimbledon in the FA Cup. The worry is that, because Spurs need him so much, there won’t be many more chances to leave him out between now and June.
Some t raditionalists rail against those of us who think the Christmas programme needs to be modified but the sheer demands on elite players are now too much. Some might forget that the pace and demands of the game have intensified over 30 years. You can play over Christmas but it’s not right that some teams are being asked to play with just one day of recovery.
My team-mates in Monaco used to laugh at England. They know on continental Europe that all players need a break: physical, of course, but perhaps more importantly, a mental break from the relentlessness of the prog r a mme and routine.
Every day you’re at the training ground, back home, off to a match, back for the warmdown, back again for training. Sustaining that for almost 12 months, into a World Cup, without a proper break is too much for any athlete.
If Tottenham had a bigger squad they could leave Harry out for the odd game like Pep Guardiola does for Gabriel Jesus, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane. But that option isn’t there at Spurs. And it exposes a bigger problem coming down the line for the club. It may be that they can offer him the kind of money that would do justice to a player who has outscored Messi in 2017. But even if they can do that, can they put the players around him to make him feel he can win trophies?
I said in the summer that this was a time for Tottenham to expand the squad with worldclass players. I still feel that, t hough with t he stadium needing to be financed it might have come a few years early to put themselves in the best position to keep Harry.