WHEN HARRY MET GLENN Kane and Hoddle on Spurs and England
Spurs legend and MoS columnist Glenn Hoddle f inds his successor in No10 shirt determined to prove he can be a true local hero and turn Tottenham into title contenders
HARRY KANE is doing his best to match Glenn Hoddle. Not on the pitch, you understand. The fashionable, leather brown shoes Hoddle is wearing would makes that an unfair contest.
No, they are trading old-school Tottenham stories, tales of coming through the ranks at White Hart Lane. And Tottenham’s current No10 is trying to convince one of the greatest to wear the same shirt that he, too, had to struggle as a trainee.
‘We had to clean the first-team boots, the balls, stuff like that,’ says Kane. However, he realises he is on shaky ground here. ‘I heard the jobs were a bit worse back in the old days?’
Hoddle agrees. ‘Oh my word! It was worse. Me and a lad called Gary Hines must have done something wrong, as we were designated to go up on the roof of the stadium and make sure that the cockerel emblem up there was cleaned. It was great, though, because it was a beautiful sunny day and you could see right over London and we ended up sunbathing for five hours.
‘But every time I ran out at White Hart Lane, that grounded me. Every time I came out I could see the cockerel emblem and said to myself: “Don’t get carried away. Always remember the day you had to clean that”.’
Kane realises when he is beaten and gracefully concedes. ‘We had to make sure things were neat and tidy. But we didn’t have to go up on the roof to do cleaning. They didn’t go that far!’
Kane and Hoddle together at Tottenham’s Enfield training ground is an intriguing meeting. Excited trainees of the academy peer through the windows to the indoor pitch for a better view. Kane might be the draw but everyone, of course, knows Hoddle.
The pair embrace warmly and clearly enjoy the conversation and a chance to compare their respective careers. For Kane, Hoddle is the legendary player he heard about first from fans and then saw in YouTube clips, while Hoddle was an early cheerleader for Kane, bucking the trend a year ago by suggesting he could represent the future of England and Tottenham.
That doesn’t seem so extraordinary now Kane has scored 31 goals in a season and this term’s slow start has given way to a spell of nine goals in his last six games for Spurs and 12 in total this season.
His England debut, when he scored, came last March and he now has three in eight. But a year ago many were still waiting for Kane’s star to fade. Not Hoddle.
‘You could see him as the real deal as soon as he came into the team,’ says Hoddle. ‘A lot of people were saying: “Well, we’ve got wait and see.” But I look at young players coming in. I could see his ability.
‘As a striker he’s got a little bit of everything. He can hit it, he’s got enough pace, he plays off his left, his right. He scores all types of goals. He has this little instinct to know where the ball will drop, which means he picks up positions. And that’s a bit of everything really. That’s why I went early on Harry and said he should be playing for England as well.’
Kane, sat alongside Hoddle, is understandably humbled to hear this directly from a man so embedded in Tottenham’s history.
‘He wore the No10 shirt and I chose it because of the legends who have worn it for Spurs,’ says Kane. ‘You think of Glenn, Robbie Keane, Teddy Sheringham, Les Ferdinand. So when it became available I knew that was a shirt I wanted to take and hopefully, to be a Spurs legend.
‘Even to be doing stuff like this with him is special. And to hear that from fellow professionals who have played the game and done so much for the game as well, is great and gives me a lot of confidence going forward.
‘I’ve enjoyed every moment of this last year and a half since I’ve been playing week in, week out for Spurs.’
For a club steeped in history and one which, along with Southampton and Everton, have the best reputation for bringing through academy players, it is curious that Hoddle and Kane are a rarity: home-grown players from the north-east London area, who grew up Tottenham fans and, in Hoddle’s case, became one of the club’s greatest players.
Kane is possibly en route to doing something similar. Hoddle, from Harlow, 20 miles north of White Hart Lane, says: ‘My dad first took me down to White Hart Lane when I was eight or nine and I was watching the likes of Jimmy Greaves. Man United had that fabulous team with George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law.
‘And it was just incredible that I had the opportunity to go and train there. It was very, very special.
‘We used to train Tuesday and Thursday nights. I would jump on a train at 11, on my own, from Harlow all the way down to White Hart Lane. And that was an eye-opener at 11 years of age. You wouldn’t be able to do that nowadays.’
Kane, from Chingford, some five miles north east of White Hart Lane, has followed a similar path. He adds: ‘I remember washing Robbie Keane’s boots and asking him a few questions. It’s stuff you remember as a kid. You take that on and make sure you’re a bit more hungry to go on and do what they’ve achieved.’
Steve Perryman, John Pratt, Ledley King, Sol Campbell, Nick Barmby and Ian Walker are the most notable graduates through Tottenham’s ranks in the last 40 years, other than Hoddle — hardly an outstanding strike-rate. But that appears to be changing.
‘There’s a crop of youngsters here, English players, who have come through and it just shows it can be done in this modern age, when everyone is thinking foreign first,’ says Hoddle.
‘Spurs have been a beacon of light really with the boys who have come through. Most of them have been home grown; a couple have come in from outside. It just shows that if you get a nucleus of players and develop them right, they can get into your first team. And the fact that they’re English is magnificent.’
Kane, too, warms to the theme. ‘If I can be a role model for kids, then that’s fantastic. That’s what I want to do. The more players who come through the academy and make it into the first team, that’s what we want. Not just for
You could see him as the real deal as soon as Harry made the first team
the club but for the country. If they’re young English players coming through, that’s fantastic. I’m happy to be part of that. I’m grateful that people look up to me because I was there once.’
Kane still has some way to match the likes of Hoddle but the first hurdle has at least been cleared. Eight Tottenham games came and went at the start of the season without a goal and the label of being a one-season wonder was beginning to stick.
‘I was talking to Harry earlier about the little barren spell he had here at the beginning of the season,’ says Hoddle. ‘But I felt confident that he was going to get through it. But more important, he was confident. That is the test of the real good players. When things are going well you’re inspired and full of confidence, that’s easy, that’s the easy side of the game.
‘It’s those moments when you have a dip in form or you have an injury and you know you’re playing with an injury, that’s where the test is. And that’s where you have to be really strong minded and believe in yourself. And Harry’s come through that with flying colours.’
Kane, however, had always been prepared for that spell which, in itself, is a reflection of his maturity. ‘Coming through the ranks and being a local boy, I understand all the hype,’ he says. ‘When I was a fan, if you see someone burst on the scene, you think: “Can he do it for another season? What’s he going to be like?”
‘So I know what people are talking about and what they’re thinking. I prepared myself for what was going to happen this season, if I didn’t score, or if I did score. And then you’re ready when it happens. I never really had any doubt about it but, of course, now when I’m scoring people don’t really talk as much about them sort of things.
‘Things were going so well for me last season that it was always going to happen, there was going to be a spell where I might not score for a few games. That’s part of being a player, part of being a striker as well.
‘For me it was just about contributing to the team. It was never about myself and: “Oh you haven’t scored, it’s the end of the world.” I sti ll felt I was playing well, I was bringing others into play, I was creating chances, I was holding it up, which is part of my game as well. I was still working hard. It was: keep doing things right, keep training hard, don’t get annoyed at it. It’s part of it. And I knew that the goals would come.’
It’s not just Kane impressing, though. Tottenham are unbeaten in the Premier League since the opening day of the season.
Hoddle detects something a little more substantial in Mauricio Pochettino’s team than the usual Tottenham surges for the Champions League, that have often ended in failure.
‘I think the two centre-halves, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen, and the goalkeeper, Hugo Lloris, and Eric Dier have been so important,’ he says. ‘That’s the foundation, so the guys like Harry, Mousa Dembele and Dele Alli can go and play and do what Spurs have always done: play good attractive football on the front foot.
‘This year, with the youngsters they have and the energy they have, the timing is right. If there were a few older players in the side I’d be suspicious if they could keep pressing like this right the way through the season. But I think they can do it. The key will be when they have a bad result. Then they have to bounce back. And if they add that, they can get in the top four this year without a shadow of doubt.
‘That’s why there’s a confidence here: because they’re not shipping goals at the other end. They really do look solid without becoming defensive. They are still an
attractive team going forward, they still have the energy to press, they still have enough ability with the likes of Christian Eriksen and those types. But they’re not open as they have been over the last four or five years.
‘That foundation has given them a real basis. People will look at the creative side and goals. But without that foundation, they’re going to have to score two or three every game.
‘Whereas now they’ll think we can win 1-0, we can win 2-1, we’re not going to concede a lot of goals and that’s a wonderful feeling that makes you a consistent team. And then you’ll do things in the league.’
Kane interjects. ‘It’s hard for teams playing us because they know if we get the first goal they think: “Bloody hell, this is going to be a long day”.
‘Last season, we were probably scoring a lot but conceding a lot. When you look at our goal difference now and the end of last year, it’s a lot better. That is the defence, they’ve been great this season: Eric Dier, the two full-backs have been great. And Hugo is a fantastic keeper. We have that great base and we can build on that.’
Roy Keane said in his playing days that Manchester United were dismissive of Spurs. ‘We all know what Tottenham are about: they are nice and tidy but we’ll f****** do them,’ Keane said.
Yet it does not feel like that under Pochettino. ‘If you look at our team, we tackle, we press, we hound players,’ says Kane.
‘We don’t make it easy. Even against Chelsea, for example. Probably in the past Chelsea are coming to White Hart Lane thinking: “Let’s get a result”. But we’re probably one of the last teams they’d want to play at the moment, after last year’s result [Tottenham won 5-3] and the way things are going now. We’re full of confidence especially at home, with the atmosphere and obviously there is great belief around the stadium now so they’re going to be right behind us. We’re just excited.’
Hoddle expands the point. ‘You know you’re on to something when you can eat into the mindset of the opponents. When West Ham went 2-0 down at White Hart Lane, they knew they had a really hard task. Great teams have that.
‘When you go away to them you think: “Everyone has to play nine out of 10 if we’re to get anything out of this”. That’s what opponents are thinking about Tottenham now, particularly at The Lane.
‘It is one of those grounds: it’s only 35,000 but it’s a throwback to the old days. The atmosphere is better than any other ground in the county when the fans get behind them. Derbies they always do. So on Sunday the place will be rocking tomorrow.’
Kane has the last word. ‘London derbies are that little bit more special, there’s that little bit more feeling. We’ll being going into the game on a high and the fans will be on a high.
‘Everyone is excited but we can’t get too carried away. There’s a still a long way to go. We’ll take it game by game but we are confident.’
Sensible to the core yet expectant of the best, that is Harry Kane personified.
WHEN HARRY MET GLENN...