England captain Harry Kane placed the ball on the penalty spot and stepped a few paces back. Along with millions of compatriots, he took a deep breath.
It was the 104th minute of the semi-final against Denmark in the European football Championship on Wednesday night. Kane had a chance to put England in the lead at London’s Wembley Stadium — and, perhaps, seal the team’s place in its first major tournament final in 55 years.
Yet when Kane’s initial shot was saved by Danish goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, it seemed as if the burden of history was too much. A split second later, when the ball spilled out for the striker to tap into the net, it was redemption. “It wasn’t the penalty I wanted to execute,” said a relieved Kane after the match. But, he added, the winning goal was still “one of the proudest moments of my life”.
If England’s place in Sunday’s final against Italy is based on a stroke of luck, it was also earned by a lifetime’s devotion to excellence.
Kane is the head of a new model army, the product of a fresh approach to football that has abandoned the belief that the nation’s manifest destiny is to reign over the world’s favourite game. Instead, the rise of Kane and the team he captains is based on absorbing the advances made by other football cultures, while retaining the English bulldog spirit.
“We haven’t won it yet,” warned Kane, however. “We’ve got one more game to go.”
Harry Edward Kane was born in 1993 in Walthamstow, east London. His father Patrick and mother Kim were obsessive fans of nearby football club Tottenham Hotspur, for which their son now plays. Spurs fans serenade him with the chant of “He’s one of our own!”
The family moved to suburban Chingford, where Kane went to the same school that his idol David Beckham once attended. There, Kane met Katie Goodland. The couple married two years ago and have three children.
Hothoused in the youth systems of a number of English Premier League teams, Kane signed a scholarship contract with Spurs aged 16. Few remember him as a prodigy, though. Unlike many of his current teammates, the physically awkward Kane did not earn quick promotion into the senior side. Instead, he was sent on “loan” to a series of lower league teams.
What marked him out was an insatiable desire to improve. While at Millwall in 2012, Kane angered coaches — who thought his effort might lead to injuries — with his habit of practising long after the team’s training sessions had ended.
“We no longer have street footballers,” says Constantine Gonticas, a director at Millwall, of Kane’s generation of academy-trained players. “They are almost deliberately created to have no distractions. [Kane] married his childhood sweetheart. He’s done everything in an exemplary fashion. There is nothing remarkable about him — apart from on the pitch.”
Kane’s work ethic was crucial in eventually cracking the Premier League, the world’s most-watched domestic football contest. Multi-billion-pound broadcasting contracts have showered elite English clubs with cash, which they have spent acquiring a cast of the world’s best players and coaches.
At Spurs, Kane learned tactical acumen from the Argentine former manager Mauricio Pochettino. He was surrounded by sports scientists who designed a personalised training programme that aimed, for instance, to improve his acceleration when sprinting. And he developed an unerring ability to shoot with power, precision and relatively little backlift. He has netted 221 goals for Spurs and 38 for England, on track to break scoring records for both club and country.
The former Real Madrid star player turned coach Zinedine Zidane has described Kane as “a complete player . . . he did not seem to be one [at first], but in the end, he is.”
Off the pitch, Kane has few known vices. He enjoys playing golf. He loves to watch American football, naming his labradors after the NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Russell Wilson. Last year, he sponsored Leyton Orient, providing financial support to the struggling lower league east London club. Alongside teammates, he has been “taking the knee” before matches in protest at racism, but has left black colleagues such as Raheem Sterling and Tyrone Mings to do the talking.
Most of all, Kane appears singularly, even boringly, obsessed with football. He’s spoken of wanting to be considered among the world’s best players, but to do that, he needs to become a winner.
A bucketload of goals at Spurs has not led to trophies. That frustration led Kane to indicate earlier this summer that he wants to move to a better-resourced club. Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea are among those believed to be willing to pay a transfer fee in excess of £100m for his services, which would make him the most expensive English footballer ever.
That would be a personal accolade of sorts, alongside the “golden boot’ awards for highest goalscorer earned at the 2018 World Cup and in three separate Premier League seasons.
Kane, however, is keener on a victory whose spoils he can share with teammates and a grateful country. “I’d trade [the golden boots] in to win the Euros this summer,” he said last month. “Winning a team trophy, especially for our nation, would probably be the greatest highlight in my professional career.”