KING KANE: Face-to-face with talismanic England’s Bayern striker

Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane says he’s “in the prime” of his career as he bids for more silverware with the Bundesliga leaders this season. In a wide-ranging interview with the Bundesliga, the 32-year-old talks about Christmas in the Kane household, the art of scoring goals, the impact of Lennart Karl on Bayern this term, and plenty more besides.

Plans for Christmas

To be a good dad and bring the fun. I’m always busy with football in this period and we have a lot of games, so it’s hard to really do a lot with the kids. I try to just be there and have fun, and we go away for Christmas all the time. It will be a mixture of things because I have two older girls and two younger boys, so it will be a mixture of activities for sure. Ultimately, Christmas for me is about making the kids happy and seeing the smile on their faces and spending as much time as I can with them. I’m looking forward to it.

Sharing  hat-trick balls to his  kids

Not any more, no. I don’t get away with that one since I’ve been here. The kids still have them, but they’re putting more pressure on me now. I brought another Bundesliga one home recently, the Stuttgart one, and my son said he wanted the one with the stars on it, so he wants a Champions League one. There’s more pressure on me to get different types of balls now, but they still use them and they kick them around the house. They’re excited when I bring one back, but they don’t fully count as Christmas presents, so I can’t get away with that one.

Setting scoring targets

I’d say so. During the season, I don’t get too caught up in it and I try to give myself small targets of a certain amount of goals in a small block of games. I think you know yourself when you are playing well or not, and even if you are not playing well and still scoring, you know that it’s not going to last forever and you still need to improve in moments. Sometimes you’re playing amazingly and not scoring, so you can’t get too down on it. There are highs and lows throughout any season, but this season has been consistently pretty good from a goalscoring point of view, even though there are still performances where I could’ve done better. Ultimately, it’s just about knowing where you are as a player rather than just the numbers, and that’s what I like to look at.

Most influential  person on career

It’s hard to pick one person. I would probably go back to my youth team days and to John McDermott, who was the head of the academy back then and who is now working with the England team and the FA. He was amazing for my development at that age from 13 all the way up to the youth team. Without him in that role, I don’t know if I would be the player that I am now. As I got older, Tim Sherwood gave me my first Premier League chance and I was able to take that. He always believed in me from when he was at the reserves to when he got the main job, and he always believed I could do it at the highest level. That then takes me into Mauricio Pochettino, who developed me from there and turned me into a different type of player. He made me a lot stronger physically and made me understand what it’s like to be a Premier League player. I’ve obviously named three there, but I can name so many. I look back at my whole career and there are so many people who helped me, but those are a few that had a big impact for sure.”

Point in football career

Good question. I’m 32 now and sometimes you get to an age where people just assume you are going to start slowing down and assume it’s coming to an end. But I feel like I’m in the prime of my career, and I just touched on the numbers I’m putting up and physically how I feel. Even if I look at the running data from this season, I’m running as much as I’ve ever run before, so it’s hard to say. I feel like I could play for many more years and I feel like I’m right in the prime of what I want to do, and hopefully that lasts for another few years. As we know in football, things can change pretty quickly, so we will see. Right now, I feel really good.

England  bid for 2026 World Cup

I think we are at that stage now where only a win is going to satisfy us and the country. We had that a little bit in the last Euros because we got to the final and there was still a lot of negative noise around us. We knew that unless we won it, that noise was going to continue and it did, and that’s part of it. We’ve been building on the success from 2018 onwards, from the semi-final of the World Cup to the final, quarter-final, and then final. We’ve been knocking on the door and we’ve consistently been one of the best teams in the world, so there is an expectation going into this tournament. We’re fourth in world rankings and people see us as one of the favourites, so we have to acknowledge that and take that into the tournament and be able to handle that pressure. We’ve had a lot of good moments in the last eight years as a national team, but ultimately, it’s about winning now. We want to win the biggest trophies and we definitely have the quality to do it, now it’s just about handling those moments. I’m looking forward to that challenge and whenever a major tournament comes around, it’s the peak of your career and the peak of the pressure and expectation and excitement that you feel. I’m excited to see how I and the team handle that.”

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