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Harry Kane MBE
- Thread starter thfcsteff
- Start date
peter joyce
Paul McVeigh
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
http://www.theguardian.com/football...up-final-tottenham-hotspur-harry-kane-chelsea
Capital One Cup final a special occasion for Tottenham’s Harry Kane
Having watched Tottenham’s last cup final win over Chelsea as a fan, Kane, who has gone from starting on the bench to being Spurs’ top-scoring talisman, has a very special feeling about Sunday’s re-run at Wembley
For Harry Kane, it is written in the stars. When Tottenham Hotspur last won a trophy, it was the Carling Cup in 2008 and Chelsea were the team they beat in the final. Kane remembers it vividly. He was in the Wembley crowd as a 14-year-old fan. Seven years on Kane enters the re-run on Sunday afternoon as Tottenham’s leading man, their 24-goal striker and one of the feelgood stories of the season. His journey from starry-eyed Tottenham supporter to centre stage in the Capital One Cup final has been marked by a refusal to be cowed by setbacks and, more recently, a clutch of Roy of the Rovers moments. He can feel the call of destiny.
“I’ve been to Wembley a couple of times for England [youth matches] but the one which stands out for me is the Carling Cup final against Chelsea, which we won,” Kane says. “I was there as a fan, with the family, and it was a great day out. To see them lift the trophy and all the fans to stay behind and to stay with them is something that I’ve been thinking of leading up to this final. If I’m up there lifting the trophy, it would be something very special. So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.”
There is little that supporters love more than to see one of their own wearing their club’s shirt and living their dream. Kane finesses the connection because he is such a humble, likeable young man and because his rise to prominence has been so sudden and, yes, unlikely.
As recently as early November, Kane was not a part of the manager Mauricio Pochettino’s starting team for the most important matches, despite knocking loudly on his door with goals in the Europa League and Capital One Cup. His biggest one was against Besiktas.
But the turning point came at Aston Villa in the Premier League, when he came on for Emmanuel Adebayor as Tottenham trailed 1-0 and scored the last-gasp winnerwith a deflected free-kick. There was an element of good fortune but the overriding impression was of a young player who was forcing things to happen for himself and the team.
Pochettino could omit him no more, gave him his first league start of the season, ahead of Adebayor, against Stoke City on 9 November and what has happened since has taken the breath away. As Adebayor has gone into reverse – the Togolese has become White Hart Lane’s forgotten man – Kane has been an ever present in the league. He has 14 goals in total, the most memorable being the doubles thatsank Chelsea and Arsenal.
Everything is happening at breakneck speed. Roy Hodgson has said that he will give Kane his first senior call-up for the upcoming fixtures against Lithuania and Italy; the first of them, on 27 March, will see him back at Wembley.
Kane has become only the second Spur since 2007-08 to pass 20 goals in a season (Gareth Bale was the other one) while he stands to be the first since Gary Lineker in 1991-92 to reach 30. There have been heady comparisons to Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham, and he has even managed to wangle two new contracts out of Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, in six months.
Off-the-field, there has been increased attention, on himself and his girlfriend, Kate Goodland. “I’ve told her she’ll have to keep her feet on the ground, we all do,” Kane says, with one of his broad smiles.
There was also the publicity about his dark secret – he spent a year at the Arsenal academy when he was eight – while pictures emerged after his match-winning performance in the north London derby on 7 February of him as a 10-year-old with dyed red hair, at Arsenal’s Invincibles title parade. “At that age, most kids are just football fans,” Kane says. “I love Tottenham and I think the last derby definitely showed that. People will always have an opinion and there will be pictures but that’s this day and age, and Twitter, and what you’ve got to deal with.
“In a way, it was a compliment that those pictures came out. If I hadn’t have scored, they would never have come out. I don’t know what Arsenal fans think of me. That was a very special day for me and one I won’t forget.”
Part of the fascination with Kane relates to his explosive improvement. It is one thing for a 21-year-old Englishman to establish himself in a top-level team but quite another to become its talisman. And all in the space of under four months.
Kane has always been strong but now he looks stronger and he is bullying centre-halves, notably Gary Cahill in the 5-3 home win over Chelsea on New Year’s Day. He also looks quicker, sharper, lighter on his feet. Throw in his natural goal instinct and sky-high levels of confidence and it is a potent roostertail.
“I’m a late birth, on 28 July, and I was a late developer in my age group,” Kane says. “Even this year, I have developed in terms of muscles. I’ve done a lot of work in the gym with the new manager and the new staff to help me get stronger and fitter and gain that extra yard of pace. I can see it in my game. It’s definitely helping me this season. I’ll keep working to get that little bit quicker and stronger because that’s what you have to do to become a top, top player.”
Kane talks about Pochettino’s much-lauded fitness regime, which took in what he describes as “by far the toughest pre-season I’ve had under any manager”. It was defined by a lot of running and gruelling double sessions, and it has set up Kane to cover 13km in matches, not to mention help him and the team to finish strongly in them. Tottenham’s season has been fired by important late goals.
In the end, though, any young player needs a manager to trust them and here Kane gets animated. “I think it’s harder for a player to come through the ranks these days,” he says. “There’s a lot of money in football and if a team hasn’t got an answer, they just go and buy someone. But that’s not always the answer.
“We’ve got young players – the likes of me, Ryan [Mason], Andros [Townsend] and Nabil [Bentaleb] – who have shown that you don’t always have to buy. There are players in your academy that are good enough. It’s just whether or not they get the chance. Maybe, other clubs will look at us and start looking at the academies. But it’s such a cut-throat league and the pressure on managers is tough. You have to have a strong manager to do that.”
Kane has come up the hard way, via successful loans at Leyton Orient and Millwall, and less successful ones at Norwich City and Leicester City. He joined Tottenham aged 11 but, by then, he had already been rejected by them – and Arsenal. “I remember my Dad telling me I was released from Arsenal, I wasn’t too downhearted about it,” Kane says. “I was too young to think about it being a big deal. Once or twice a week after school, I’d go there and play football.”
Arsenal had spotted Kane at Ridgeway Rovers – the junior club in Chingford that produced David Beckham – and he returned there before Tottenham took him into their academy, only to let him go. Kane went to Watford, where he played in a trial game against Tottenham and scored twice. Tottenham promptly took him back.
“I’ve always wanted to be a footballer and I’ve always believed that’s the path I was going to go down,” Kane says. “It’s how you deal with the setbacks. Self-belief is a massive thing in football. If you don’t believe in yourself, not many others will.”
Kane also followed Beckham through Chingford Foundation School and he cites the former England captain as one of his inspirations. “He launched his Beckham Academy at the O² [in 2005] and I got to meet him there,” Kane says. “I was a little skinhead. It was a great moment for me, as it was for the other kids. I also got to meet him when he came to train at Spurs [in January 2011]. He was a true professional.”
Kane played in the under-21 Premier League final in May 2013 against Manchester United, when a Tottenham team managed by Tim Sherwood lost 3-2 at Old Trafford, having been 2-0 up at half-time. The Chelsea showdown is of an altogether different scale. “We’ve played well in the big games – Chelsea, Arsenal, this year – so we are really confident playing against the bigger teams now,” Kane says. “It gives us a lot of confidence knowing that we beat Chelsea 5-3. It’s all about us and what we can do.”
Capital One Cup final a special occasion for Tottenham’s Harry Kane
Having watched Tottenham’s last cup final win over Chelsea as a fan, Kane, who has gone from starting on the bench to being Spurs’ top-scoring talisman, has a very special feeling about Sunday’s re-run at Wembley
For Harry Kane, it is written in the stars. When Tottenham Hotspur last won a trophy, it was the Carling Cup in 2008 and Chelsea were the team they beat in the final. Kane remembers it vividly. He was in the Wembley crowd as a 14-year-old fan. Seven years on Kane enters the re-run on Sunday afternoon as Tottenham’s leading man, their 24-goal striker and one of the feelgood stories of the season. His journey from starry-eyed Tottenham supporter to centre stage in the Capital One Cup final has been marked by a refusal to be cowed by setbacks and, more recently, a clutch of Roy of the Rovers moments. He can feel the call of destiny.
“I’ve been to Wembley a couple of times for England [youth matches] but the one which stands out for me is the Carling Cup final against Chelsea, which we won,” Kane says. “I was there as a fan, with the family, and it was a great day out. To see them lift the trophy and all the fans to stay behind and to stay with them is something that I’ve been thinking of leading up to this final. If I’m up there lifting the trophy, it would be something very special. So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.”
There is little that supporters love more than to see one of their own wearing their club’s shirt and living their dream. Kane finesses the connection because he is such a humble, likeable young man and because his rise to prominence has been so sudden and, yes, unlikely.
As recently as early November, Kane was not a part of the manager Mauricio Pochettino’s starting team for the most important matches, despite knocking loudly on his door with goals in the Europa League and Capital One Cup. His biggest one was against Besiktas.
But the turning point came at Aston Villa in the Premier League, when he came on for Emmanuel Adebayor as Tottenham trailed 1-0 and scored the last-gasp winnerwith a deflected free-kick. There was an element of good fortune but the overriding impression was of a young player who was forcing things to happen for himself and the team.
Pochettino could omit him no more, gave him his first league start of the season, ahead of Adebayor, against Stoke City on 9 November and what has happened since has taken the breath away. As Adebayor has gone into reverse – the Togolese has become White Hart Lane’s forgotten man – Kane has been an ever present in the league. He has 14 goals in total, the most memorable being the doubles thatsank Chelsea and Arsenal.
Everything is happening at breakneck speed. Roy Hodgson has said that he will give Kane his first senior call-up for the upcoming fixtures against Lithuania and Italy; the first of them, on 27 March, will see him back at Wembley.
Kane has become only the second Spur since 2007-08 to pass 20 goals in a season (Gareth Bale was the other one) while he stands to be the first since Gary Lineker in 1991-92 to reach 30. There have been heady comparisons to Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham, and he has even managed to wangle two new contracts out of Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, in six months.
Off-the-field, there has been increased attention, on himself and his girlfriend, Kate Goodland. “I’ve told her she’ll have to keep her feet on the ground, we all do,” Kane says, with one of his broad smiles.
There was also the publicity about his dark secret – he spent a year at the Arsenal academy when he was eight – while pictures emerged after his match-winning performance in the north London derby on 7 February of him as a 10-year-old with dyed red hair, at Arsenal’s Invincibles title parade. “At that age, most kids are just football fans,” Kane says. “I love Tottenham and I think the last derby definitely showed that. People will always have an opinion and there will be pictures but that’s this day and age, and Twitter, and what you’ve got to deal with.
“In a way, it was a compliment that those pictures came out. If I hadn’t have scored, they would never have come out. I don’t know what Arsenal fans think of me. That was a very special day for me and one I won’t forget.”
Part of the fascination with Kane relates to his explosive improvement. It is one thing for a 21-year-old Englishman to establish himself in a top-level team but quite another to become its talisman. And all in the space of under four months.
Kane has always been strong but now he looks stronger and he is bullying centre-halves, notably Gary Cahill in the 5-3 home win over Chelsea on New Year’s Day. He also looks quicker, sharper, lighter on his feet. Throw in his natural goal instinct and sky-high levels of confidence and it is a potent roostertail.
“I’m a late birth, on 28 July, and I was a late developer in my age group,” Kane says. “Even this year, I have developed in terms of muscles. I’ve done a lot of work in the gym with the new manager and the new staff to help me get stronger and fitter and gain that extra yard of pace. I can see it in my game. It’s definitely helping me this season. I’ll keep working to get that little bit quicker and stronger because that’s what you have to do to become a top, top player.”
Kane talks about Pochettino’s much-lauded fitness regime, which took in what he describes as “by far the toughest pre-season I’ve had under any manager”. It was defined by a lot of running and gruelling double sessions, and it has set up Kane to cover 13km in matches, not to mention help him and the team to finish strongly in them. Tottenham’s season has been fired by important late goals.
In the end, though, any young player needs a manager to trust them and here Kane gets animated. “I think it’s harder for a player to come through the ranks these days,” he says. “There’s a lot of money in football and if a team hasn’t got an answer, they just go and buy someone. But that’s not always the answer.
“We’ve got young players – the likes of me, Ryan [Mason], Andros [Townsend] and Nabil [Bentaleb] – who have shown that you don’t always have to buy. There are players in your academy that are good enough. It’s just whether or not they get the chance. Maybe, other clubs will look at us and start looking at the academies. But it’s such a cut-throat league and the pressure on managers is tough. You have to have a strong manager to do that.”
Kane has come up the hard way, via successful loans at Leyton Orient and Millwall, and less successful ones at Norwich City and Leicester City. He joined Tottenham aged 11 but, by then, he had already been rejected by them – and Arsenal. “I remember my Dad telling me I was released from Arsenal, I wasn’t too downhearted about it,” Kane says. “I was too young to think about it being a big deal. Once or twice a week after school, I’d go there and play football.”
Arsenal had spotted Kane at Ridgeway Rovers – the junior club in Chingford that produced David Beckham – and he returned there before Tottenham took him into their academy, only to let him go. Kane went to Watford, where he played in a trial game against Tottenham and scored twice. Tottenham promptly took him back.
“I’ve always wanted to be a footballer and I’ve always believed that’s the path I was going to go down,” Kane says. “It’s how you deal with the setbacks. Self-belief is a massive thing in football. If you don’t believe in yourself, not many others will.”
Kane also followed Beckham through Chingford Foundation School and he cites the former England captain as one of his inspirations. “He launched his Beckham Academy at the O² [in 2005] and I got to meet him there,” Kane says. “I was a little skinhead. It was a great moment for me, as it was for the other kids. I also got to meet him when he came to train at Spurs [in January 2011]. He was a true professional.”
Kane played in the under-21 Premier League final in May 2013 against Manchester United, when a Tottenham team managed by Tim Sherwood lost 3-2 at Old Trafford, having been 2-0 up at half-time. The Chelsea showdown is of an altogether different scale. “We’ve played well in the big games – Chelsea, Arsenal, this year – so we are really confident playing against the bigger teams now,” Kane says. “It gives us a lot of confidence knowing that we beat Chelsea 5-3. It’s all about us and what we can do.”
shaney
Alan Hutton
Harry Kane attended the same school that produced David Beckham
Harry Kane, second from the right, poses with David Beckham at the launch of his academy in 2005
Kane has changed a little bit in the last 10 years
He carries off the skinhead look.
spurs' magna carter
Ronnie Rosenthal
Lost today and didn't score...yet I still love this boy. Despite that lot playing 8-1-1 today still showed them to be mugs.
Never once gavebup, keep up the good work Harry!
Never once gavebup, keep up the good work Harry!
No, he will barely have 1 game a week going out.
Now is his chance to play with freedom, its truly every game on its own merit from here on in.
Would like to see some tactical work to improve his threat.
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
Lets rest him up for England's pointless u21 tournament in the summer.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
F*ck England. I'd rather he gets nowhere near that rat's nest (players who join up with the full squad always seem to get big heads and ask for transfers soon afterward - see Lallana, Shaw, and countless others for examples of this), but it is ultimately his choice - however, there's no onus on us when it comes to obligations to that odious bunch.
chicken_badge
Gudni Bergsson
The Kane for England talk is so tedious it's only a story because his run of form coincided with a long spell with no England fixtures.
I've become disillusioned with England for a while and would rather no Spurs players got called up because all we get in return are injuries. However I wish Kane had got a home cap sooner, because it would have been advantageous if he had already played at Wembley before today
I've become disillusioned with England for a while and would rather no Spurs players got called up because all we get in return are injuries. However I wish Kane had got a home cap sooner, because it would have been advantageous if he had already played at Wembley before today
demotw
Nicola Berti
Happens with all newer players, start well then get found out (Bale for example) - What makes the good players is those that learn to adapt their game accordingly and imo will be the biggest test of Kane. That's what take certain players from good to v.good.
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
Not the full squad. The Euro u21s are on in the summer and Hodgson seems happy that Southgate take Kane along.
Absolutely pointless tournament for a player of Kane experience.
Actually don't think so
Mourinho had a plan, and it was two DMs (one of which is a natural CB) covering and closing the lanes to both Kane/Eriksen
don't think Kane was exposed today, think Chadli/Lamela/Townsend were exposed against the quality level of Cheat$ki ..
Spurs7891
Jermaine Jenas
But Lamela only played for 19 mins. Thought our attack improved greatly when he came on.
Spurs7891
Jermaine Jenas
Thought Kane lacked the usual killer instinct in front of goal. In the first half he had a chance but his tame shot didn't trouble the Chelsea goalie. Remember that Kane had scored from a similiar position in that 5-3 win in the league. Then, he should have scored the one-on-one chance in the second half but was too slow to shoot and let Terry block his shot. Kane was clearly not his usual self in the Final. Maybe playing in his first Cup Final in front of so many people with so much expectations had affected him.