Harry Kane, the evolving outlier, may be among the last great one-club goalscorers
Football tactics are complex chains of reasoning. Football tactics have a chaos theory element. Football tactics must always return to certain key tenets of space and movement. Very bright people are employed to stare at this seeking the tiniest margins of influence. But sometimes you do wonder about the obvious things.
For example, the great innovation of the past 15 years has been the way teams attack “between the lines”, as embodied by inside-forwards, false 9s and their many shades. We remember the story of Pep Guardiola’s late-night phone call to Lionel Messi back in May 2009, babbling about switching his role to “the Messi zone”.
This wasn’t new: Hungary were doing the same thing to England’s rigid lines 56 years before. But it created a trend and pretty much all elite teams are now geared to attacking that area between midfield and defence, between full-back and centre-half. This is how the best players torture defences. Between the lines: this is the weak spot.
So, just a thought. Why are there still lines? Why, if between the lines is such a problem, are we still offering up a flat back four, a three, a deep five? Why do defences still set up like they’re expecting an attack based on the previous 120 years of linear orthodoxy? It’s as though two decades after the invention of the musket the French infantry is still insisting the answer to this gamechanging ballistic weapon is brighter battlefield tunics and a more inspiring trumpeter.
And yes this kind of “child’s eye” tactical pub-chat sounds more convincing when it comes from, say, Johan Cruyff, who had the advantage of being a genius, seer and visionary. And no doubt most managers would prefer to avoid a 14-0 defeat while trying to stop Messi and Neymar with a revolutionary mix of false full-backs, “jagged lines” and messing up your offside trap.
But there is surely some kind of innovation waiting to happen here. Struggling to defend between the lines? Don’t have lines. Jonah Hill can play me in the movie.
This is a very roundabout way of getting on to Harry Kane and the Premier League goalscoring record. Kane has become his own attacking innovation in the past few years, a forward who doesn’t so much play between the lines, as occupy two orthodox positions, the 9 and the 10, in rotation.
It has been fascinating to follow him, from the early days of high-throttle centre-forward play, when he still looked like an ambitious young Edwardian notary clerk who wants to marry your daughter; through to his current incarnation as creator, disrupter, goalscorer, and bearer of all those fragile Tottenham hopes.
At the same time other elements in Kane’s personal horizon have continued to shrink. He turns 29 in July. Judging by the noises off this week he seems more likely to stay at Tottenham now, committing the entirety of his peak years to his boyhood club. And why not? The task of driving Spurs on towards one trophy, any trophy, is as noble as hoovering up the financially inevitable shared glory available at one of the mega-clubs.
But if Kane does stay the pursuit of that scoring record will come into sharper focus, a marker of what he can still achieve. Does it matter? Are records really interesting? Why is this one even a thing when it simply refers to a commercially defined period of time, a graphic on Sky Sports, wilfully overlooking the fact Jimmy Greaves has 357 of these top-flight goals, Ian Rush 232, Tony Cottee 214?
In this case the numbers are interesting, if only because the record itself looks increasingly like an anachronism, something that belongs outside football’s evolution into a game of systems and team play, of finding space outside those lines.
These are the standings. Kane has 178 goals, 82 short of Alan Shearer’s Premier League mark of 260. He needs four 20-goal seasons from here, taking him up to 33 years old. It feels doable. Shearer scored a similar number past the same age. Kane just needs to repeat the most prolific period of his career either side of turning 30, not get injured, not become a midfielder, not play abroad, and he may just reach that summit.
One thing worth saying at this point is: how good was Shearer? Never mind the longevity, Shearer also had three 30plus goalscoring years before Euro 96 when he was one of the best players in the world. Memories may be clouded by the later version, who seemed to reinterpret football as a game to be played while walking backwards, arms outstretched like a man groping for the bathroom light. But peak Shearer had supreme mobility, passing, shooting power and above all a thrilling sense of ruthlessness.
Like Kane, Shearer was also an outlier. Both stayed at clubs where Premier League games are the most vital games, and where your own ability to score is the key tactical element. How many footballers of that quality will do this from here? In any case the numbers are more equally shared now. Thirtygoal individual seasons are rare. Players move leagues more often. If Kane doesn’t get that record there is a fair chance nobody ever will.
Certainly very few of the current crop are anywhere near it. Mo Salah needs five more seasons to get close. Romelu Lukaku is on a very creditable 118. The only other under-30 in the top 30 is Raheem Sterling, the only under-25 in the mix Marcus Rashford with 59. Otherwise it’s packed out with Dion Dublins and James Beatties, remnants of a time when the career centre-forward roamed the land, nose buried in the rushes, blind to the approaching asteroid.
Kane has found his own variation on the role of chief scorer in the time of between-the-lines, of team play and shared roles. It makes him a note of interest, a genuine star outside the elite; and who knows, perhaps the last great one-club goalscorer, out there in pursuit of his own white whale.