But he is also an inveterate hoarder of individual accolades. Only last week, he posed with his three latest statuettes: one for being the top scorer in Germany, a second for being the most prolific striker in the Champions League, and a third for achieving the same at Euro 2024. The last of these is the most deceptive in its grandeur. Kane offered a diminished version of himself at the European Championship, anonymous in the final and so error-prone against Switzerland that Gareth Southgate did not even keep him on for penalties. His three goals represented a high-water mark shared with five others, too.
Naturally, the image of Kane stockpiling awards emboldens the detractors who cannot wait to remind him of his failure, in a 15-year professional career, to claim a single major trophy for club or country.
You sense these criticisms cut him to the quick. When he returned to Tottenham with Bayern last month to win a meaningless pre-season bauble called the Visit Malta Cup, he handed the captain’s armband to Manuel Neuer, saving himself the indignity of hoisting it aloft. On the one hand, you could view it as a gesture of respect to his former club; on the other, you could see a man desperate to avoid a picture that would launch a thousand memes.
A persuasive narrative around Kane is that he is underappreciated. The logic is undeniable: where else but England would a player with 66 goals in national colours, 17 more than Sir Bobby Charlton and more than twice as many as Sir Tom Finney, be so routinely satirised?
At times, he could be forgiven for thinking he is more popular in Germany than in his homeland. After his first match for Bayern, Max Eberl, sporting director of RB Leipzig, likened his projection in Bavaria to that of a “messiah walking on water”.
Rarely is he afforded the same veneration in England. Even the Football Association, poised to honour him with a golden cap before he faces Finland, has not been averse to a little casual mockery. “What’s that in your pocket, Chris?” the governing body tweeted, when Tottenham lost an FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United in 2018, linking to an unrelated video of centre-back Chris Smalling saying: “Harry Kane.” To say that Kane and Mauricio Pochettino, his then-manager, were furious would be an understatement. “I talked to the gaffer about it,” he reflected. “And all we said was: ‘Would other countries do that to their players?’ Probably not.”
While Kane has captained England on 72 occasions, he has arguably left less lasting an imprint on the popular imagination than Beckham, who did so 59 times. The difference, ultimately, is about moments. Close your eyes and you can picture Beckham’s signature flourishes in a heartbeat: either the last-gasp free-kick to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, or the redemptive arc that took him from his red card for lashing out at Diego Simeone in 1998 to his winning penalty against Argentina four years later. Kane’s story, by contrast, has been characterised more by remorseless excellence than indelible highlights.
Commercial cut-through is a factor, too. Where Beckham was the most high-profile footballer of his generation — “more famous than me, definitely”, quipped Nelson Mandela once — Kane’s public persona has tended towards the vanilla. He seems, sometimes, to be a player of limited hinterland, more preoccupied with attaining Ronaldo-esque records than pursuing celebrity for its own sake.
This is, by itself, a quality deserving of the highest admiration. And yet a sense persists that Kane struggles to elicit intense emotions one way or the other. The public mood around him is still characterised by restless frustration as to why he went missing for crucial periods this summer, and a debate as to whether he still deserves to be the first name on the England teamsheet. On his feats alone, Kane should unite the country in adoration. But without the trophy to define him, he will continue, however perversely, to attract ambivalence.