Jermain Defoe backs Harry Kane to shatter Alan Shearer’s long-standing Premier League record

Sign up to Miguel Delaney’s Reading the Game newsletter sent straight to your inbox for free

Sign up to Miguel’s Delaney’s free weekly newsletter

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Jermain Defoe’s status in Tottenham’s Hall of Fame was well established at the time he first set eyes on the teenager he knew would one day take his place as the goal king of White Hart Lane.

Harry Kane was just 16 and a relative unknown playing for Tottenham’s U18s when Defoe made the bold declaration to the club’s academy coaches they had a once-in-a-lifetime talent on their hands.

As the pair prepare for a Wembley reunion on Saturday - with Kane having matured into not just one of the most prolific centre forwards in England but in the world - Defoe’s prophesy has already been fulfilled.

Now the veteran Bournemouth and England striker is predicting Kane will go on and shatter Alan Shearer’s long-standing record of 260 Premier League goals.

“Shearer was special and with all the great forwards in the Premier League is still at the top,” says Defoe, speaking from in the in bowels of Bournemouth’s intimate Vitality Stadium home.

“Wayne Rooney was getting close to him but it is not easy. For 260 goals you have to be doing it year in, year out, for a number of years. I just feel like Harry has to be thinking about beating him because I would.

“There is a lot of pressure but I just feel Harry must be thinking that’s the dream. The dream is to be the highest goal-scorer for England and the highest goal-scorer in the Premier League.

“If he continues scoring goals like he is scoring goals, the sky is the limit.

“If you speak to him he must feel, especially in that team, where it’s like his team now, the way they play with the chances and that manager, he must be looking at the record.”

Kane, 24, has taken just 123 appearances to race to 84 Premier League goals and if he can maintain that impressive strike rate he will eclipse Shearer’s tally before he celebrates his 32nd birthday.

Such figures have inevitably made Europe’s biggest clubs take notice but Defoe says it is not out of the question Kane will buck the modern trend by seeing out his entire career in north London.

“He could do because he loves the club,” said Defoe, when pressed on whether Kane will remain at Tottenham until the end of his playing days.

“You don’t really get many players that stay at a club like 10, 12 or 13 years like John Terry, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard.

“Players move on and sometimes I can imagine it’s frustrating for fans. When you get players who have had unbelievable seasons at a football club, then all of a sudden you think as fans, ‘he might not even be here next year’.

“If you are doing well, you are going to be linked [to] all the clubs. At the end of the day that’s up to the player. If you love the club you’re at then it doesn’t matter who you’ve been linked with does it really?

“You just continue playing at your club and being happy. Let’s be honest, he is playing in a top team.

“We speak about Harry Kane and Dele Alli but you look at the back four and players like Moussa Dembele and Christian Eriksen and they have a top manager.

“They have so many good players and I felt like they were so close last season and they are moving into a new stadium. They are a real top team.”

Only Lionel Messi has scored more goals in 2017 than Kane, but while he has a habit of leaving even the most accomplished defenders in a state of shock his exploits have not taken Defoe by surprise.

“I remember watching Harry when he was 15, 16 and saying to the coaches at Tottenham how good he was. I knew then he was a natural finisher.

“I have been saying it for a long time and always felt he should have been involved sooner.

“When he did get his chance Harry did it in his first season and everyone said, ‘he’s not going to do it again’ and he did it again.”

And again, and again.