The German champions are reportedly lining up a new role for their €100m man, but this would be a reckless waste of such an asset
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Harry Kane scores goals. It's been the one constant in his life. Ever since he was released from Arsenal while still in primary school, he's had that bloodlust for finding the net.
There are few players in the history of mankind, let alone the sport itself, who have been more skilled at anything as much as Kane is at putting a synthetic leather ball between the sticks. For the rest of his life, he will be remembered most for that, especially now he's managed to get the monkey of a first trophy off his back.
Yet Kane's current club, Bayern Munich, are said to be considering different plans. Reports from Germany last week claimed that there have been talks behind the scenes in Bavaria to move him into the No.10 role, potentially paving the way for a younger striker to come in and lead the line.
But to even seriously contemplate removing Kane from his natural position is negligent. It's a complete misunderstanding of him as a player, and if Bayern are considering anyone else to play up top, they may as well sell the England captain.
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From the moment Kane was entrusted with a regular first-team berth at Tottenham – towards the end of the 2013-14 season, under Tim Sherwood of all coaches – he has been one of the world's most consistent source of goals. At the time of writing, he has netted 451 in 699 appearances in total for club(s) and country.
Let's break that down even further, and reduce the timespan to when he became a starter, the 2014-15 campaign. Since then, Kane has averaged 0.66 goals a game, pretty much working out at two in every three matches. In that time, he has finished as the top scorer in either the Premier League or Bundesliga a staggering five times, including the season just gone, won the Golden Boot at two major tournaments (2018 World Cup and Euro 2024), taken home a European Golden Shoe and shared the Gerd Muller Trophy, essentially France Football's Ballon d'Or for strikers only, with Kylian Mbappe.
When you strip everything back, Kane is still one of, if not the most, prolific scorers at the very top level of football. You don't need to overthink what his role ought to be.
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Under Mauricio Pochettino, Kane showed brief glimpses of expanding his game, occasionally dropping deeper and spreading play, though at no more of a rate than once a match or sometimes less. It was only when Jose Mourinho took the Tottenham job that his game diversified to an extreme extent.
Pochettino's Spurs were built on principles of pressing and progressive passing, but Kane suffered lengthy injuries in all of 2017, 2018 and 2020 that reduced his mobility and efficiency at leading that press. Mourinho's inverse game plan of sitting deep and hitting teams on the counter was made all the more palatable by his striker's change of physical profile. If Kane could occupy defenders and drag them away from their line, then others could dart in behind and take advantage.
After Tottenham beat Manchester City 2-0 in November 2020 to go top of the Premier League, Kane explained what Mourinho had asked of him: "Mainly just to hold up the ball. Especially when you're under the cosh a bit. Just winning fouls, trying to bring others into play. On the counter-attack, if I'm the line dropping deep, then I know I've got runners in behind. Thankfully we took advantage of that."
On that day, Son Heung-min and Giovani Lo Celso were the scorers, but Kane was the one named Player of the Match by host broadcaster , with Gary Neville even proclaiming there were shades of Zinedine Zidane about him. Speaking post-match, Mourinho said: "Maybe he will be responsible for everyone that loves football to change the way people look at a striker. The tendency is to see how many goals a striker scored – you are as good as how many goals you score. There is a Golden Boot for that. But a striker can be man of the match – I don't know who was responsible for giving him that award but I praise them – as a striker can be the man of the match without scoring."
Kane ended the 2020-21 season as the second player in Premier League history after Andrew Cole to record both the most goals and assists, taking home the Golden Boot and Playmaker awards. There's an obvious reason as to why moving him deeper full-time is tempting, but that negates what else he brings and how he creates space for himself and others.
Getty Images SportChanging minds
Kane's persuasion of proving people wrong his entire life has even found a way to penetrate even the most stubborn of minds. Just ask his former Tottenham boss Antonio Conte.
During his time as a pundit on Italian television for the delayed Euro 2020, Conte spoke of his admiration for Kane as an all-round forward, but claimed if he were the striker's manager, he would set a very rigid set of instructions: "Many praise Harry Kane for his ability to go get the ball and play with the team, such as with the equaliser against Denmark. Of course, he's good at that too, but it's in the box where he’s clinical and as a coach, I would always keep him in there because he's devastating."
Alas, that's not how it played out when Conte joined Spurs later that same calendar year. Kane ripped off a run of 16 goals in 28 Premier League matches, yet it was team-mate Son who took home the Golden Boot with 23 strikes, level with Liverpool's Mohamed Salah. The Italian tactician quickly realised the duo worked so effortlessly in tandem with one another, particularly with Kane dropping deep to create space for his South Korean colleague to run into. To keep Kane as a penalty-box striker would have limited his impact on the game in general – he's a player who needs to be involved or risk going missing altogether.
That didn't, though, at any point tempt Conte into revolutionising Kane's role. He was still the main man to build around, but that was in attack. Like Mourinho, Conte knew his striker was at his best when freed from the shackles of traditional expectation, yet still needed the framework of a functioning team to fully benefit. When Cristian Stellini stepped in as interim boss briefly toward the end of 2022-23, he shuffled Kane into midfield like a quarterback during a 3-2 defeat at home to Bournemouth when all out of other ideas, and as it turned out, it made the Cherries more comfortable with their task at hand at both ends of the pitch. Football isn't as simple as 'Kane can play nice passes so he should play deeper'.
AFPRooney warning
You don't have to look too far back to see why moving a complete forward into midfield isn't exactly simple mathematics. The example of late-career Wayne Rooney most notably sticks out.
For 11 straight seasons heading into 2015-16, Rooney breezed into double figures of league goals for Manchester United. However, when Louis van Gaal made tactical tweaks which made the Red Devils one of the most blunt and boring sides in the top flight, the ex-Everton man found himself starved of service. Van Gaal's stop-gap solution was to make Rooney a deep-lying midfielder on a regular basis, with runners such as Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford sprinting into space ahead. The plan seldom worked because the opposition rarely afforded United that space, while their new playmaker's passing range was mainly only useful at getting the ball to the opposite full-back.
Though Rooney and Kane are somewhat comparable as two of England's most technical players of all time, there are some key differences. Rooney only surpassed 20 goals in a Premier League season twice, and United didn't win the title in either year, proving he was better off as a support striker rather than the main outlet. The native Liverpudlian was also much shorter than Kane, making him far less of an aerial threat, while he was already well on the decline by the time Van Gaal changed his position.
Nevertheless, it's as clear an instance as any that the theory behind moving around strikers because of their other attributes is flimsy in reality. After all, Rooney and Kane are the all-time leading scorers for United and Tottenham, respectively. The goals are what really matter.
