It turns out when Pep Guardiola coined the phrase “the Harry Kane team” at the weekend, he could easily have been talking about England.
The Manchester City manager seemed to be trying to be complimentary to the free-scoring striker when he listed his rivals for the title this season.
“There is Chelsea, but we also have United and we saw again the Harry Kane team scores every day two or three goals,” he said.
Such is the importance the 23-year-old seems to hold right now, not just for his club, but for his country.
Kane scored 80 seconds into his debut against Lithuania in March 2015 after coming on as a substitute and in all the time has been on the pitch for England, he has been responsible for precisely a third of the team’s goals – 10 out of the 30.
By comparison, Ronaldo’s 78 strikes represents a slightly smaller fraction of Portugal’s overall haul, and Bale and Messi are even further behind in terms of their importance as a goalscoring force to Wales and Argentina respectively.
There is Chelsea, but we also have United and we saw again the Harry Kane team scores every day two or three goals
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola
Indeed, the only big name to have scored higher than Kane in research carried out by Express Sport is Zlatan Ibrahimovic who, over his 15 years career as a Sweden international, scored an impressive 39 per cent of his country’s goals all the time he was on the pitch.
Not that the Tottenham star will enjoy his status as statistical talisman for either club or country.
Man City defender John Stones, when asked if his club manager’s “Harry Kane team” comment could be justified at international level, was keen to play it down.
“I think Harry, if you spoke to him and asked him that question, he would say he would not want it to be like that because that is the type of guy he is – a team player,” Stones said.
“He knows the jobs and roles of everybody else and knows what he can bring into the team and he is a massive part of it.
“I definitely think he would not want it to be like that and he would want to be known as part of an England team that won things and played great football whoever was in the team.
Tottenham's Harry Kane scores hat-trick against APOEL
“I don’t think it matters who scores as long as the ball goes into the net. If Harry scores a hat-trick and we win, he is not a selfish guy – he will make sure that it is known that we won because everybody has done their job. That is the type of the guy he is.”
“One-man team” has become a criticism over the years, but having a single phenomenal individual talent is nothing to be ashamed of.
Bale took unfancied Wales all the way to the European Championships semi-final last summer, further than England have been for 20 years. The team that did eventually stop them, Portugal, were a relatively ordinary collection of reasonably-talented individuals with one notable exception.
In previous eras, Diego Maradona won the 1986 World Cup by putting the “single” into single-handed. And, for that matter, the “handed”. The former, though, was nothing to be ashamed of.
But is Kane capable, on the world stage, of proving to be that good? One man with a reasonable perspective on that – albeit from the opposite direction – is Joe Hart.
Despite facing some of the world’s greatest strikers in his 73 internationals, the England goalkeeper does not baulk at describing Kane as “brilliant”, a quality which he hopes is rubbing off in training.
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“You just know he is a good player,” he said. “You know you will get a hard shot with Harry. If you give him half an inch he will get a strike on goal and make you work.
“There is no real secret to him and that is the brilliance of Harry. It is not dazzling skills; Harry is just brilliant at what he does and he is just one of the best out there.
“You have got to rely on some brilliance from yourself if you are going to save something in the corner. And he always ends up going in the corner because the majority of the keepers he faces are in good positions, so that is what he knows.
“He keeps scoring goals and you cannot ask for any more than that. Long may it continue in an England shirt.”
