Tottenham striker Harry Kane happy to blaze trail for England's young talent

The FA's Greg Dyke is holding Kane up as the archetypal success story in development football

Tottenham striker Harry Kane scores against West Bromwich Albion, one of his 20 Premier League goals so far this season (Getty)

He is the poster boy for youth development in English football, but Harry Kane says that he feels no pressure at being held up by the game as one of the diminishing numbers of native players who have made it from academy to first team in the Premier League.

The Tottenham Hotspur striker was voted the Professional Footballers’ Association Young Player of the Year by his peers on Sunday night and, in the aftermath, he said that he wanted one day to win the PFA Player of the Year award picked up by Chelsea’s Eden Hazard. “Why not?” he said. “I’ve done well to get where I am now. But it doesn’t stop. I keep trying to improve, keep trying to work hard, see what I can get better at.”

It was a night at the Grosvenor House hotel Kane and his family will not forget soon, and only when the pictures had been taken and he had found a quiet table in the dressing room of The Charlatans, one of the night’s headline acts, could the 21-year-old reflect on a remarkable season.

He has played just twice for England but already the Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, is holding Kane up as the archetypal success story in development football. It is a role Kane is willing to accept. “It makes me feel proud. That’s what I’ve always wanted to become,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to become a top footballer in English football. I’m getting there.

“People say, ‘Is it extra responsibility?’ It isn’t. I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing and, hopefully, that sets a good example for the younger generation coming through. That’s all I can do, affect the way I play, the way I improve and, hopefully, that helps others.”

As he looks back over his short career, Kane says that it was a fellow Chingford boy, David Beckham, whom he counts as his first hero. Kane met him a couple of times as a child and then again when Beckham trained with Spurs in 2011. Wayne Rooney is now old enough to be regarded as senior figure by the young England generation and he, too, has offered advice.

“It was great to be able to chat with him [Rooney],” Kane said. “Again, he was somebody I looked up to when I was younger. He told me what it was like. He was in a similar situation when he was younger. He just said to ‘keep your mind focused, keep working hard, keep trying to improve, keep your friends and family close, and that’s all that matters’. That’s all I’ve tried to do anyway, always tried to keep improving. I’ll continue to do that, to become as good as I can become.”

That quest for self-improvement led to a conversation with Frank Lampard Snr, introduced to him by Harry Redknapp when he was Spurs manager. Lampard recommended Kane buy some running spikes to run drills to improve his speed, an exercise that Frank Lampard Jnr regarded as fundamental to his development.

“I was only young at the time,” Kane said. “It’s a funny story, really. I ordered some spikes online. They wouldn’t fit. I realised they were javelin shoes. So my mum sent them back! I got the proper spikes, did some training in them. Looking back now, that is stuff that helped me.

“I’ve always had the brain to be a footballer but the physical side wasn’t always there. I had to work hard. As I’ve got older I’ve got taller and naturally stronger as well. I definitely worked harder at that than any other part of my game to get better. To see it come through as it has this season is great.”

He still has a good chance of winning the Golden Boot in the Premier League this season, currently on 20 goals, one behind the leader, Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero. Kane once scored 81 goals in a season for Ridgeway Rovers, the team which Beckham also turned out for in his junior Sunday league days.

“You can always get better at everything,” Kane said. “I work a lot on my finishing. You’ve seen I don’t just score one type of goal. I score all different types of goals. That’s down to training. After sessions, left foot, right, headers, free-kicks, penalties, all different. I will keep practising that. Stuff in the gym. As much as I can I will try to improve everything. It’s not one thing I think, ‘I can do that’. It’s everything and, hopefully, it will come together.”