LONDON, ENGLAND – 2017 will go down as the year that Harry Kane officially ceased being a ‘one-season’ wonder.
Those critics’ words used to belittle his goal-scoring credentials reverberated loud and proud across Wembley in Tottenham’s 5-2 encounter with Southampton on Tuesday.
Any dispute that Kane is not the genuine article after becoming a hat-trick hero for the eighth time in the calendar year no longer has any validity when stacked against the two personal accolades which he collected along with the match ball of this Boxing Day thriller.
With history in his sights, the England international faced a race against time to eclipse Alan Shearer for the most Premier League goals scored in a calendar year. Since 1995, Shearer’s record of 36 remained untouched and barely challenged before Kane’s previous hat-trick, against Burnley last Saturday, had the pair finally on level-pegging.
A premature end to Spurs’ festive schedule, with safety concerns over their clash with West Ham United seeing the game pushed back to January 4, denied Kane a second chance to take Shearer’s mantle and lay siege to Lionel Messi’s crown – not that he needed it.
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Where most of the continent’s top five leagues favour a Christmas break, the Premier League remains committed to festive football, allowing Kane to comfortably usurp Messi as Europe’s top scorer across the past 12 months with 56 goals.
More than mere goals set Kane apart when his feat is stacked against those of Messi and Shearer in the record books. Even before putting Southampton to the sword, he reached 36 goals in 35 games, compared to his compatriot’s 42 top-flight matches, while he bettered the Barcelona talisman’s haul in 11 fewer games.
“If you see the list in the last seven, eight, nine years, it always was: Messi, Cristiano (Ronaldo), Cristiano, Messi, Messi, Cristiano and today it is Harry Kane, a player from Tottenham – that is a massive, massive achievement,” Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino said post-match.
“We feel that it is our achievement too, the teammates and the club. I think it’s fantastic and Harry wanted to share with everyone that happiness.
“A 24-year-old scoring the goals and for me it’s not only because he’s a massive talent as a striker. If you know how he is as a person, as a professional, it’s amazing.
“It’s a pleasure to work with him every day.”
Spurs’ final game of 2017 lent itself not just to Kane but also a period of reflection. A half-season of emphatic victories over Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund has been offset by domestic cup capitulations and squandered leads against the league’s lesser sides.
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Their body may reside in Wembley but its heart continues to lie 13 miles north-east of it, where work continues apace on a new stadium on the site of White Hart Lane. For one season only, they have traded their N17 postcode for the most famous address in HA9.
The fallout of leaving that spiritual home, even temporarily, is far greater than mere supporter melancholy. They have already dropped nine points here – five more than during a final season in the snug confines of The Lane. That margin was also a marked difference between their points tally at the same stage of the previous campaign.
Manchester City’s runaway lead atop the Premier League, aided by 4-1 hammering of Spurs just 10 days ago, has rendered that shortfall largely irrelevant but the pressure of Champions League qualification continues to loom large. Facing Juventus in February’s Round of 16 is by no means unwinnable but underlines the importance of the north Londoners maintaining pace in their battle with the best of the rest on the home front.
‘Transition’ is Pochettino’s definition of the Lilywhites’ current state of flux with their White Hart Lane sojourn a significant but not its sole cause. Facilities at their Enfield training base also being upgraded this season while, on the pitch, suggestions that they have regressed after two seasons at the business end of the league belie the true situation.
Flaws would always appear in a team bursting with such promise, particularly in attack. Kane, at 24, is yet to reach his true peak; neither has Christian Eriksen, who provided the assist for his opener, nor Dele Alli and Heung-Min Son – architects of the other and scorers in their own right. Spurs’ best is yet to come both now, as traditionally strong finishers in the second half of the season, and the long-term.
Southampton supporters that braved the elements in venturing to Wembley to watch their hosts running amok could be forgiven for wondering about what might have been. Countless promising players and coaches, including Pochettino himself, have been poached from the South Coast in recent years.
Another player looks set to follow in the January transfer window with Virgil van Dijk’s absence for a third successive game leaving the writing firmly on the wall. The only questions remaining are the identity of the defender’s final destination, with both Manchester City and Liverpool in the hunt, and what price they are able to command.
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“I know that around Virgil there will be a lot of speculation but this is my decision,” Saints manager Mauricio Pellegrino insisted.
“It’s a tactical reason. The manager decides which is the best for every single game – we win, draw and lost without Virgil.
“We have to wait until January because now I can’t control the market.
“For now he is part of our club and we know Virgil is an important player for us but we will see what happens in the future.”
But even the Holland international would have struggled to stifle Kane in his current form.
Those that derided his goal streak as little more than a glorified procession of close-range strikes and penalty kicks have failed to acknowledge that he has now scored over 20 goals in the previous three campaigns. This season threatens to be even more emphatic, with 18 goals already to his name at just beyond the traditional midway point.
So much for being a one-season wonder.
Richard Buxton is a UK-based writer and special correspondent for Sportsnet. He filed this report from London’s Wembley Stadium.
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