English football fans have been waiting 58 years for the Three Lions to repeat the feat from the World Cup on home soil in 1966, trying to win another championship trophy. National team captain Harry Kane has amazingly not won a single title during his career. Is this the year England and Harry Kane will finally succeed?
For more than ten years, England captain Harry Kane has scored goals to order. But despite the goals pouring in, Kane is still chasing his first major trophy. Could Euro 2024 in Germany be Kane’s big chance to win something on the football pitch?
Harry Kane has for several years been regarded as one of the world’s best attacking players, with a goal average that stands up to anyone. He is the English national team top scorer of all time, with 65 goals in 95 games. He has been top scorer in the Premier League three times, and in 2018 he won the Golden Boot as the World Cup’s top scorer, for an England that eventually finished fourth.
Most players of Kane’s caliber can point to a well-stocked trophy cabinet, but neither Kane’s previous club Tottenham nor England are in the habit of winning titles. Tottenham have not won anything since the League Cup in 2008, and England still dream of repeating the World Cup feat at home in 1966, the country’s only trophy to date. It therefore came as no surprise when Kane decided in the summer of 2023 that it was time to for a transfer and end his career at Tottenham. In his thirteen seasons at the club, Kane scored an impressive 280 goals in 435 games, but without Tottenham winning a single title. The closest Kane and Tottenham came was a Champions League final and two League Cup finals, all ending in defeat.
The choice to leave Tottenham came after several years of flirting with other clubs, but every time Kane expressed his desire to leave, Spurs powerful chairman Daniel Levy managed to persuade him to stay. Levy made Kane one of the Premier League’s highest-paid players, promising him reinforcements that would enable the club to challenge for the biggest trophies. But the trophies failed to materialize and Kane eventually had enough of Levy’s assurances about the club’s high ambitions.
Clubs all over Europe were chasing Tottenham’s top scorer, among other things, both Manchester clubs were ready to make Kane the Premier League’s best-paid footballer by far. But club chairman Levy, known as English football’s toughest negotiator, refused to sell his top scorer to one of his rivals in the Premier League, and in the end it was German club Bayern Munich who won the battle.
Kane’s choice of a new club seemed sensible. His biggest motivation for a move away from Tottenham was to win something, and by choosing Germany’s most successful club, it seemed likely that Kane’s dream would finally be fulfilled. Several were nevertheless skeptical of Kane’s choice. Both English and German football experts pointed out that German football is completely different from the English game, and that Kane would have problems coping with the physically tough Bundesliga. But Kane quickly refuted his critics. In his first ten league games, he scored an incredible fifteen goals, and throughout the season the goals continued to pour in. The season ended with an incredible 44 goals in 45 games for the English national team captain. But despite all the scoring – and to Kane’s great dismay – the season ended without a single trophy for the victorious Bayern Munich.
One can almost wonder if there is a curse on Harry Kane, said the BBC’s expert commentator and Arsenal’s former top scorer, Ian Wright, when it became clear that Bayer Leverkusen was the winner of this year’s Bundesliga. – I simply feel sorry for him, said Sky Sports’ outspoken expert commentator and former Manchester United captain, Roy Keane. – It is a mystery. He’s a lovely guy, a fantastic goalscorer and the perfect captain for England, but no matter how much he scores, the teams he plays for can’t win anything. Now it is very rare that Bayern Munich go very long without winning trophies, and Kane will very likely experience winning something with the big German club. Kane is no more than 30 years old, and probably has several years left at the top level. But does it do anything to the motivation, when the years go by, without the trophies coming?
The motivation to play football is greater than ever, Harry Kane told English reporters before leaving for Blankenheim, the English national team’s home base during the European Championship, some ten miles west of Leipzig. – I just have to keep doing my best, score goals and make sure we win. I’m sure the trophies will come eventually. And who knows, maybe it will already happen this summer?
Despite varying performances so far in this year’s European Championship, England remain the bookmakers’ favorite to win. One of the reasons for the favorite stamp is Harry Kane, but there are also other good reasons why England is considered a real title candidate. National team manager Gareth Southgate has been given time to build his own team. The squad in the team has been stable over several years, and many of the talents who were given the chance by Southgate early on, such as Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden, have been given time to flourish. Not least, Southgate seems to have got used to an English national team environment which for many years was characterized by big egos, extra-sporting scandals and associated poor results on the pitch. Sky Sports’ highly respected football commentator, former England and Manchester United captain Gary Neville, has no doubt that the English national team is much better prepared for success this year than has been the case in previous championships.
Ten or twenty years ago, we were always champions before the championship was kicked off, and thus the fall became all the deeper when the results failed. But now things are different, England simply look like a good football team, and the English squad seems to be free of all the star fads that have unfortunately characterized English national team football for far too many years. Neville also points to the fact that the atmosphere among English supporters has become completely different, after the success in the Euro’s at home in 2021.
Nobody expected England to do so well in the European Championship in 2021. In England, the final loss at Wembley was considered a victory. This year we have the opportunity to build on the success from 2021. National team manager Gareth Southgate gets much of the credit for England being one of the favorites to win the European Championship. Southgate is not known to be a man of big words, but is nevertheless optimistic about the team’s chances in Germany.
We are constantly performing better. We have a strong squad with lots of talent, and will make sure we bite against the very best, a clearly confident Southgate told the English press after an unconvincing 2-1 victory in the round of 16 against Slovakia.
And while Southgate and England are fighting to defend the favourite stamp in this year’s European Championship, England fans are dreaming that the wait will finally be over and that the Three Lions will win an international title again, 58 years after Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy, on home soil in 1966. Should it happen this summer, no one will cheer louder than England’s national team captain – the still trophyless Harry Kane.
Author; Geir Jacobsen
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