Even Pele had his say, as weeks turned to months, and minutes became hours, without England’s talisman scoring for his country. The great Brazilian felt that poor service was the problem. The newspapers blamed the manager. One tabloid eviscerated Terry Venables for threatening to turn “England’s thoroughbred striker into an emaciated, goal-starved and totally disillusioned international donkey”. They don’t write ‘em like that anymore . . . but the hunger passed.
We’re talking Alan Shearer and his strange, early-England-career famine, which ended with his emphatic opening goal at Euro 96. After that, he gorged himself, striking 22 times in 30 internationals to become his nation’s preeminent player and captain. But before that? Shearer went 21 months and more than 18 hours on the pitch without an England goal.
Harry Kane, who has gone 13 months and just over nine hours of playing time without one, need not fear starvation just yet. But he really could do with scoring at Hampden Park on Saturday. For now, his run is a blip, the quirk of a bad Euro 2016 (excusable, since every England player bar Eric Dier had one) and injuries keeping him from duty since England went to Slovakia last September. Neither Kane nor Gareth Southgate will want the run building into a bigger story though. Shearer made it through the desert, but not everybody can.
England history — especially recent, 51-years-of-hurt history — is strewn with talents the country couldn’t get to reproduce their club form in an international shirt, even talents whose class (like Kane) was not in doubt. Strikers? Think Robbie Fowler, 231 goals in club football, just one competitive international goal. England simply cannot afford for Kane to become another striker lost in the machine.
Even now, at 23, his importance seems to loom. It’s a team game, sure, but every team needs its reference points and leaders and its alpha players who, even just sighted in the tunnel, cause opponents doubt. With the best will in the world, that is not going to be Gary Cahill, the likely captain against Scotland. Southgate deftly culled Wayne Rooney from both team and squad but he now needs somebody to take over the totem role.
Advertisement
Kane is his most obvious candidate and if England are to do anything at next year’s World Cup, it’s hard to imagine it happening without a big contribution from the Tottenham player. Russia looks like being a tournament too soon for Marcus Rashford and one too late for Jamie Vardy, while injury histories make it hard to plan around either Danny Welbeck or Daniel Sturridge.
So for Southgate, Kane’s growth as an international footballer appears essential. “That’s one of the great challenges,” admitted the manager when asked whether he can help Kane, like Shearer, grow into a prolific England striker despite a moderate international start. Kane has scored only five goals from his first 17 internationals but that’s exactly the record Shearer had — also Michael Owen. Southgate, of course, was there at Euro 96, there on the field to see Shearer blossom close up. He knows the key was a partnership.
A difficulty for Shearer had been Venables’ “Christmas tree” formation and how it cast him in what back then seemed to be a rather new-fangled and too-European lone striker role. It was far from Blackburn Rovers’ bread-and-butter 4-4-2. It took Teddy Sheringham to be installed behind him, to help make sense of it all.
The star No 9 needed the link play of the cerebral No 10. Dele Alli is a different sort of footballer to Sheringham, just as prone to run off the ball as to come towards it, but that suits Kane just fine because he also likes to mix up his game. Southgate has been speaking to players from the “golden generation” in an attempt to understand precisely why they could never quite bring their club form to England, and the feedback is emphasising to him the importance of recreating club dynamics, for stars, on the pitch — and in Kane’s case this means playing with Alli.
“Southgate has been speaking to players from the ‘Golden generation’
“I was talking to Paul Scholes briefly the other day and trying to pick his brains,” said Southgate. “Some of the lads who have just finished playing, Frank [Lampard], Paul and others . . . I really want to get a feel for what they think and by his own admission [Paul] didn’t quite play the same way for England as he did with his club.
Advertisement
“There’s something around being comfortable with the environment. Paul mentioned that at [Manchester] United he knew exactly where people were going to make the runs, he knew the type of service that he was going to get and what he needed to give. Part of the challenge with the international team is how do we get that.
“So, if Harry is playing with Dele there are natural connections. And Harry is a player who thrives on having people close to him as well in supporting positions. And the clearer that we are as a team about positional roles and responsibilities, the more that helps all the players.”
England came so easily to Kane at first — he scored within 80 seconds of entering the pitch as a substitute on his debut. But England managers have an unfortunate habit of complicating things. Roy Hodgson had the striker taking corners. And in Kane’s solitary game under Sam Allardyce he was left marooned, with Rooney, the supposed No 10, roaming deep as he pleased.
Hodgson did provide him with Alli for support at Euro 2016, but with Rooney in midfield there was neither the pressing game nor quick supply that Kane has been used to with Spurs. Kane’s last goals for England (against Turkey and Germany) were in games where Rooney wasn’t on the pitch. In both those matches he had Alli behind him and was flanked by a creator — Raheem Sterling against Turkey, Adam Lallana against Germany) and a wide striker (Vardy, Welbeck) — just like at Tottenham this season, when Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-Min played either side of him. The bold call for Southgate at Hampden would be to play Rashford to Kane’s left, with Lallana to his right, and Alli behind. England’s main concern, especially given that it’s Scotland’s strongest area thanks to Scott Brown and Stuart Armstrong’s form, is mediocrity in central midfield.
The way English standards come up short there is rather summed up by a vignette involving James Ward-Prowse. “Talking to Prowsey about his brief debut in Dortmund he mentioned playing against Toni Kroos and the recognition that, OK, there’s a level of player that I need to be [for the Premier League] and now there’s even more,” Southgate said. But the prospect of getting Kane on the pitch, for the first time in his reign, buoys Southgate, who knows what the player is capable of delivering. “He was in the first squad that I picked for the under-21s and immediately you could see what an outstanding finisher he was,” he said. “He had incredible self-belief and what has always impressed me about him is that he has the mentality to be the best player he possibly can be. We can’t have too many of those, because it’s infectious.
Advertisement
“He wants to work at his game. He wants to stay [behind]. He thinks about his physical preparation. He has improved physically working with Mauricio [Pochettino, his manager at Tottenham] so in every aspect he’s strong. And to have scored all the goals that he has in the past three seasons — I know he has the joke about being a one-season wonder, but he has proved it, he has put numbers on the table.”
Kane, indeed, has 78 top-flight goals at an age when Shearer had 70, and Southgate believes that he is “in position” to go on and break Shearer’s Premier League record of 260. He believes that Kane can go on to become an England captain too. “Harry gets the bigger picture of what is important for the team, just as Alan did,” Southgate said.
“I’d say that both players are very singled minded and the hunger to be top of those scoring charts was a huge driving factor for them but equally for them both, life wouldn’t be complete if they weren’t winning things with the team as well.”
Back in 1996, Pele could relax. Shearer was steered away from “emaciated donkey” to become one of England’s true lions; Southgate will fail if Kane does not also roar.
ON TV SATURDAY
Scotland v England
Sky Sports 1 and ITV, 5pm
