Remember when England fans used to bemoan Harry Kane’s likely laboured condition going into a World Cup on the back of an exhausting Premier League campaign?
Playing in Germany suits him. England’s captain and all-time record goalscorer couldn’t be in better nick as he attempts to lead the nation to its first World Cup triumph for six decades.
He has just enjoyed the most prolific season not just of his own career, but of any Bayern Munich player in history, with 58 goals in all competitions.
A hat-trick on the final day of the season saw him beat Robert Lewandowski’s single-season club record and he secured his status as the Bundesliga top scorer for the third year in a row.
He didn’t exactly wind down towards the summer. Since the turn of the year, Kane netted in 20 of his 25 appearances for club and country, scoring 28 goals, including one in both quarter-finals legs against Real Madrid and in both semi-final matches against Paris Saint-Germain.
Where Harry Kane took his shots
Average
shot distance
13.6 yards
Bundesliga, 2025-26
He now heads to the United States as not just England’s skipper or greatest goalscorer of all time, but as someone who is reshaping the narrative around his career.
It was a little over 12 months ago that Kane had still yet to win a major trophy of any note. Two Bundesligas later plus numerous individual accolades during a stunning three-year spell in Germany that has seen Kane get better with age, he now has the Ballon d’Or in his sights as well as a World Cup, both of which would take him to even greater heights.
A trophy with England has come tantalisingly close in recent years. Like so many England striking greats — Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney — Kane has produced individual brilliance and earned many accolades, but no medal.
He now sits 26 goals above Rooney’s previous record, which only lasted for eight years before Kane broke it in 2023 Sir Bobby Charlton’s tally stood for 45 years and he’s 30 ahead of that.
Top international goalscorers, all time
Aged only 32 and improving and maturing like the finest of wines, he could conceivably extend it by another, what, 25 goals in the next three or four years? For a lethal finisher who doesn’t rely on pace, Kane has time on his side. A century of England goals feels realistic.
Few, if any, strikers in the modern game epitomise all-round excellence more than Kane. Goalscorer, talisman, link-man, provider, finisher, header, defender, unlocker of doors, he scores his goals with one touch, with his head, from 18-yard curlers, long-range drives, tap-ins, chips and penalties. Most of the genres.
Harry Kane’s playing style
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Goal threat
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Box threat
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Shot frequency
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Creative threat
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On-ball involvement
Compared to peers across Europe | Bundesliga, 2025-26
Metrics derived from The Athletic’s player roles model.
With England it’s been a journey. At Euro 2016 he took corners and lost to Iceland, then in the 2018 World Cup he came to global prominence by winning the Golden Boot in Russia, the first of four successive tournaments in which England and Kane have endured heartache in the latter stages, losing in a quarter-final and a semi-final in the World Cup, and successive finals in the Euros.
Along the way he has matured and modified his game.
“I like to be able to be involved in the game a lot more than, maybe, other No 9s,” he said recently. “I like to come and drop deep and link play. I like to be able to hold the ball up when the team is under pressure.
“A No 9 is going to be judged on goals and how many they score, but I think it’s important when you’re not scoring goals that you still bring an impact to the team, and that’s what I try to do, both with and without the ball. A lot of work that we do in the high press starts with us, starts with me as the No 9.
“When I was a youth team player, I played a lot in midfield. I played as a deep holding midfielder, a No 8, a No 10. That helped me be aware of my team-mates around me. And then, as I got older, I became more of a No 9 because I was good at scoring goals and good at making runs.
“Putting the ball in the back of the net was always something that I was able to do. But then when I got to my early teenage years, I worked really hard on all different types of finishing because I understood that, in a game, you’re not going to get just the perfect finish all the time. So, being able to work on right foot, left foot, headers, free kicks, penalties, anything.”
A recurring theme in modern football is that the game accommodates intelligent strikers who age through reinvention; Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema and Olivier Giroud all extended their elite years through positioning, timing and technical refinement rather than explosiveness.
Kane firmly belongs in that category but, in truth, he has been evolving for years. His move to Bayern appears to have accelerated that transformation.
“It helps when you have a top player who wants to run and fight for the team like a youth player,” Bayern boss Vincent Kompany said of Kane last year.
“I played against him as an opponent and he has become better with age. He has a way to work towards his performances.”
Kompany has also compared Kane to Toni Kroos and Kevin De Bruyne due to his extensive passing range, comparisons that show how highly Kane is valued in the build-up at Bayern, not just via his remarkable goalscoring record.
While he scored three goals in his last major international tournament, Euro 2024, Kane’s performances were generally sluggish and tired.
Will things be different this summer, for him and England? Given the form he has shown over the past two years and the fact this will be his first major tournament with the burden of not winning a trophy lifted off his shoulders, perhaps they will.
Kane wanted to move to Bayern to feel new pressure and carry the expectation of winning titles every year. He has proved himself capable of coping with it.
His place in English football history has been assured. They’ll still talk about Kane in 100 years.
If he lifts the World Cup this summer, England will remember him forever.
