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Harry Kane cannot be compared with Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, says Spurs team-mate Hugo Lloris
Harry Kane might have scored more goals in 2017 than many entire Premier League clubs but, with the billboards already seemingly out for his ‘head-to-head’ with Cristiano Ronaldo at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium next month, some perspective was applied on Wednesday night by Hugo Lloris.
The France captain knows plenty about great strikers after training at close proximity to the likes of Thierry Henry, Karim Benzema and now Kylian Mbappé and, while certain that Kane will become England and Tottenham’s talisman, he regards certain comparisons as premature. “I think he has got a lot of things to prove in the Champions League,” said Lloris.
“He shows his quality at the moment. Five goals in two games is fantastic. We are not surprised about Harry; we know his talent, his skills, his aptitude to score goals and important goals. He is our main player. In every big team you have a big goalscorer. Tottenham it is Harry Kane. In Real Madrid you have Ronaldo. In Barça you have Messi.”
So did that make him Tottenham’s Ronaldo or Messi? “No,” said Lloris. “He’s Harry Kane. A different profile and we cannot compare what is not comparable. Ronaldo and Messi are from another galaxy but Harry has got so much potential to become one of the best.”
That potential is underlined through a series of statistics in 2017 that only Messi can better across the major five European leagues. Kane has now scored 39 goals in 34 games this year and his ‘perfect’ hat-trick with left foot, right foot and header in Cyprus against Apoel Nicosia on Tuesday was his sixth of the year.
It left him pondering the practicalities of all those match-balls before he had even boarded the Tottenham team-bus. “At the moment they’re at home, I’m hoping to build a room for them, the trophies and balls,” he said. “It isn’t built yet but hopefully it will be soon. They’re just in the bags, in the cupboards, waiting to be put up.”
Kane is currently scoring at a rate only seldom ever seen among English strikers but the two challenges are obvious. The first is to sustain what he is doing over the course of his career in the same manner as football’s truly great goalscorers. Messi, for example, has scored 477 goals in his last 482 club games. Ronaldo’s tally in that exact same 10 season spread is 437 in 453 club games.
The other benchmark will of course be silverware and, while it is impossible to have anything but admiration for how Tottenham have improved in recent seasons, a pivotal career decision surely awaits. Does Kane maximise his chances of major medals by moving on or does he accept the more outside chance of achieving those ambitions at Spurs amid the certainty of becoming a club legend?
Glenn Hoddle said on Wednesday night that Kane could eventually become Tottenham’s greatest ever striker, but that would of course depend upon him staying and even then surpassing the iconic Jimmy Greaves. Lloris believes that the key will be Kane’s internal focus and his capacity to remain so demanding of himself. “Give him time,” said Lloris, when asked whether Kane could reach the ‘galaxy’ that is currently inhabited only by Messi and Ronaldo.
“The most important thing is his ‘exigent’ towards himself. I am not worried – he is connected with the world, he is very calm, he is a hard worker and he is very ambitious. That is something very important in football. If you lose your personal ambition it can become difficult.
“For sure, he will lead the national team, he will lead Tottenham. We are still a young team and, step by step, we try to move forward.” The process will receive perhaps its sternest test against Real Madrid on Oct 17, although starting their Champions League group with consecutive wins has significantly eased the pressure.
“We are going to play in Real Madrid with a free mind - we have nothing to lose and all to win,” said Lloris. For Kane, who says that he has never felt more confident, there will also be the personal opportunity to shine on arguably the most famous stage of all.
“I want to test myself against the best and they have been the best the last few years without a doubt,” said Kane.
“It is going to be exciting – I have never been to the Bernabeu. We feel we can beat anyone on our day. Of course we know it will be tough but two good teams, an open game probably. It will probably come down again to who is more clinical in the final third, hopefully that can be us. We are going there to win, not just to get a result.”