Harry Kane Is Already England’s GOAT, but the 2026 World Cup Could End the Debate

In partnership with GOAL.com

Premier League fans, particularly those of a Tottenham Hotspur persuasion, were left disappointed this week when Harry Kane declared that he has no plans to come home as he is enjoying life with Bayern Munich so much. And why would he? He is primed to add another Bundesliga title to his maiden trophy won last year after firing Bayern to an explosive start to the season.

Kane is in the best form of his career, even pipping Erling Haaland and Cristiano Ronaldo to goal records these days and being hailed for his selfless work by coach Vincent Kompany. While he initially saw his stint in Germany as a short-term move due to his desire to become the Premier League’s all-time top scorer, he is now open to prolonging his stay in the Bundesliga.

English fans will still get plenty of opportunities to see Kane in action though as he remains as committed as ever to his country. Take the fact that he was taken off in Bayern’s last game with Eintracht Frankfurt with an ankle injury but still linked up with the England squad as usual. He is a doubt for Thursday’s friendly with Wales but he is working hard in the gym to be fit for the trip to Latvia next Tuesday, where he will hope to help the team rubber-stamp their ticket to the 2026 World Cup.

Kane wanting to stay at Bayern is good news for national team coach Thomas Tuchel, who worked with him for one season at the Bavarian giants. It means he is settled out in Germany and can use his insatiable club form as a springboard to take the Three Lions all the way next summer in the United States and finally cement his status as England’s greatest player of all time …

Two goals per game

Kane broke all sorts of goal records in his first season with Bayern but this is proving to be his most prolific yet. He has a ludicrous 18 goals in 10 games in all competitions and in his last six matches he has averaged two goals per match.

He has only failed to score once for his club this season and in that game against Augsburg he contributed two assists in the 3-2 win. His strike against Frankfurt helped Bayern make it six league wins from six and saw him become the first player in Bundesliga history to score 11 times in the opening six games of a season.

Two weeks before, Kane became the first player to score 17 consecutive penalties in the Bundesliga when he scored two spot-kicks at Hoffenheim. It is now 18 successive penalties after also burying the ball in the net from the spot against Werder Bremen.

He is not just making Bundesliga history with each week either; he is surpassing modern greats of the game.

‘Best striker of his generation’

Kane recently became the fastest player to score 100 goals for Bayern, doing so in 104 games. He smashed the previous record of Robert Lewandowski, who got to his century of goals in 136 games. And he even pipped Haaland and Ronaldo, who took 105 games to score 100 times for Manchester City and Real Madrid, respectively.

Given the head start he has given himself, it is easy to see Kane eclipsing Lewandowski’s record of 41 Bundesliga goals in a single season. At his current rate of 1.8 goals per game, Kane will have overtaken Lewandowski just 22 matches into the season. That date might seem unrealistic, but he should at least get there by the end of the campaign. He is the leading top scorer in Europe’s top five leagues despite playing two games fewer than Kylian Mbappe in La Liga and Haaland in the Premier League.

Given the esteemed company he is keeping in the scoring charts, Tuchel was not exaggerating when he told Bild this week: “He is undoubtedly the best striker of his generation. He has reached a new level and is now scoring two goals per game.

“He’s in full flow; you can feel the confidence he carries Bayern Munich and the Three Lions with ease on his shoulders. He’s in top form, and I’m glad to have him as captain.”

‘Watch his work!’

Bayern coach Vincent Kompany has grown tired of lavishing Kane with praise after each goalscoring feat but he is willing to point out the less appreciated aspects of the striker’s game.

“I don’t have much to say about the things everyone can see. What I can say is: watch his work off the ball,” the Belgian said after Kane scored twice to down Chelsea 3-1 in the Champions League. “Watch him press, help the team, recover the ball. It’s important for him, if he spends that much energy, to get rewarded and get chances to score. We can talk about talent and quality, but I keep highlighting that side because you need a lot of hard work to be where he is.”

Kompany repeated the message after Kane plundered a hat-trick at Hoffenheim a few days later. He said: “When a player scores so many goals and then wins his first title, you can’t always expect him to help defend, to give his all in every training session. Okay, at this absolute top level, maybe. But not everyone can do that. And the fact that Harry, despite all these goals, still helps so much in defence and inspires the others in every training session, of course, makes my job easier.”

Pushing himself

Kane has embraced that side of the game and, like Kompany alluded to, he claimed that ending his decade-long wait to win a trophy last season has in fact made him even hungrier. “When you win a title maybe it could be easy to go the other way and be like: ‘OK I’ve done what I wanted to achieve,'” Kane told English media this week.

“But it’s given me motivation to do more. My numbers are 11km a game, a lot of high‑speed running. Sometimes when I’m watching the games back, I’m more looking forward to watching tackles or one of my defensive actions than watching my goals back. I don’t know if that means I’m getting a little bit bored of my goals or like the tackling part as well but it’s been enjoyable.

“I was interested in how I would feel after winning a trophy. It could have been easy to be a bit more relaxed. I pushed myself the other way, being even better, eating even cleaner, doing more gym.”

Ballon d’Or ambitions

Kane also mentioned his desire to win the Ballon d’Or, something that he has not talked about much before. Kane has never ranked higher than 10th in the list of the best player in the world but his numbers this term are impossible to ignore. Still, he is well aware that his chances of even coming close to winning the prestigious prize hinge upon Bayern winning the Champions League or England winning the World Cup.

“I would love to win the Ballon d’Or,” he added. “Essentially, it is a team trophy that the best individual from that team wins, so it is going to be a Champions League winner or a World Cup winner. It would be an accumulation of doing something great individually and as a team. It would be almost the perfect season.”

Kane’s infamously long wait for a trophy, which extended to his first year at Bayern, has undoubtedly held him back when it comes to winning individual awards. He has never won the PFA Player of the Year or Football Writers Player of the Year despite winning the Golden Boot three times while at Spurs.

“I felt like, probably at Spurs, no matter how many goals I scored, ultimately unless you win the title and the Champions League, you’re not going to be in those conversations,” he admitted earlier this year.

He also noted that the public take his many goals for granted, particularly for England, given how consistent he has been. “Sometimes, I say if I was 25 now and doing what I’m doing, the excitement around me would maybe be a little bit different to what it is now,” he said. “Again, that’s part of where we are with football and I’ve seen it with some other players as they get into their 30s. Maybe people just get a little bit bored of what you do, but I’m certainly not bored.”

Time to end the debate

There is also an inescapable truth that Kane is still not considered the very best player England have had, despite being their top scorer and the fifth-highest appearance maker. Wayne Rooney tops most polls as the greatest England player of the 21st century, largely because of the excitement he generated bursting onto the scene at Euro 2024 aged just 17.

In terms of consistency and going deep at tournaments, however, he is miles behind Kane. The Bayern striker is on 74 goals in 109 appearances, while Rooney signed off with 53 goals in 120 games. Rooney played at six major tournaments but never got beyond the quarter-finals, being part of the team that embarrassingly failed to qualify for Euro 2008 as well as the ones which exited the 2014 World Cup at the group stage and were knocked out of Euro 2016 by Iceland. Kane, by contrast, has played in two Euro finals and reached the semis of the 2018 World Cup, where he also won the Golden Boot.

Sir Bobby Charlton and Sir Bobby Moore are always near the top of the all-time lists due to their roles in winning the 1966 World Cup on home soil. Kane has been agonisingly close to emulating that historic achievement but runners-up medals will not help him topple them. Captaining England to that long-awaited World Cup win next summer would end the debate once and for all.

A lot can happen between now and next July and it cannot be forgotten that Kane was far from his sharpest at Euro 2024 after ending the season with a back injury. How Bayern and Tuchel manage his minutes over the next eight months, and how he responds to this latest ankle injury, will be crucial to ensuring he arrives in the US in top condition. But right now Kane could not be in a better place or in better form.