Offside, onside, penalty, dive: believe what you want, but Harry Kane has become the complete striker at Spurs

Kane’s insatiable lust for improvement has made him indispensable in almost every phase of the game, and luckily for Spurs it looks like he’s going nowhere

Back and to the left. Back and to the left. As the Wembley crowd sat disgruntled in their seats, waiting to see whether Tottenham Hotspur would be awarded a penalty, viewers on Sky Sports were being treated to the sort of granular, frame-by-frame analysis that even the Warren Commission might have dismissed as a touch excessive. Replay after replay of the offside decision, here annotated with lines on the pitch, here with different areas of the pitch alternately lit up. Interminable replays of Kepa’s challenge on Harry Kane. There: the contact. There: look at Kane’s leg. Back and to the left. Back and to the left.

By the time Maurizio Sarri had appeared for his post-match interview bearing a laptop, purporting to show Kane’s real position in relation to the last defender - the replay the MSM won’t show you, wake up sheeple, jet fuel can’t melt steel beams - it felt legitimate to wonder whether we were really watching the future of football, or simply really bad sci-fi. But as the debate raged long into the night, as the Carabao Truther Movement kicked into action, the only thing everyone could agree on was that once again, Kane had succeeded in inserting himself into the centre of things.

For the man himself, a night of milestones. The only goal of the game, on his daughter Ivy’s second birthday, a goal that lifted him above Cliff Jones and into fourth place on the all-time Tottenham list. Kane became the first Spurs player ever to score 20 goals in five consecutive seasons. And yet for all the glory and all the controversy, in many ways it was one of those nights when Kane’s scoring touch was only part of a wider tale. As Tottenham clung desperately to their lead, as Chelsea huffed and harrumphed in search of an equaliser, Kane offered up a quiet reminder of his other talents.

Trying to imagine Kane without his goals feels simultaneously like a useful and useless exercise: two parts surreal counterfactual (what would the Mona Lisa look like if she were a fish?) to one part philosophical flagellation (at what point does a cornflakes box become a cornflakes box, rather than simply a box?). For one thing, his goals are so ubiquitous that the question will almost always be moot. But in order to fully grasp his importance to this Tottenham side, it’s crucial to look beyond the final product: at a player whose insatiable lust for improvement has made him indispensable in almost every phase of the game.

This wasn’t always the case, of course. One of the reasons Kane was so readily derided as a one-season wonder after his spectacular breakthrough in 2014/15 was that it wasn’t immediately apparent what else there was to his game beyond goals. Finishing, movement, strength, aerial ability: yes. But pace, craft, the technical ability to get himself away from tight spots and multiple markers without allowing the attack to lose momentum: not quite. Not yet.

And so perhaps the most striking development in Kane’s game over the last few years is how he has evolved from a simple target man to a genuine creative hub. As opponents have double-marked him, forced him to receive the ball deeper, with his back to goal, he has embraced his role as a facilitator, moving the ball quickly on to players running in behind. There was one moment in the first half on Tuesday night when he received the ball under pressure near the halfway line, swivelled and curled a near-perfect diagonal ball to Kieran Trippier, whose run he can’t possibly have seen.

These are the Kane moments that won’t find their way onto a Sky Sports compilation programme. The clever little reverse balls to Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen that draw defenders out of position and maintain Tottenham’s forward thrust. The flicks and nudges that put Son Heung-min through on goal. The phases when he controls the ball without a team-mate anywhere near him, and simply gathers it in, protects it, recycles it, keeps possession. Plenty of strikers are adept at one or two of these moves. Very few are equally comfortable in all of them.

Perhaps the definition of a complete striker is that when the situation demands, they don’t have to play as a striker at all. It’s often overlooked that Kane was often deployed in midfield for Tottenham’s academy teams until it became impossible to ignore his weight of goals. One of his best performances of the season came when he didn’t score at all: England’s stunning 3-2 win over Spain, when he laid on goals for Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling. With seven assists for club and country, he’s already matched his best tally in a season, with four months left.

Harry Kane has grown into the complete striker at Tottenham (Getty)

“People always talk about goals and that if I don’t score, then I don’t play well,” he said earlier this season. “But with the way we’re playing this year, we have people running in behind and I’m dropping deeper. I base my game around creating chances, and people who have watched me in the last few years know I don’t just score goals. It’s about everything; hold-up play, moving, creating space for others, and passing.”

Throw in his pressing game, his link play, his defensive ability at corners, that ruthless culture of improvement, and you can see why Robbie Keane was moved to describe him after the game - with only a touch of hyperbole - that Kane is the world’s best No 9 on current form. Even his dramatic tumble to win that penalty - right leg gently splayed to ensure contact, the fall graceful but not theatrical, feet together for minimum air resistance - felt rehearsed, honed, the product of hundreds of hours of practice, falling and falling and falling again until he finally had it nailed. Even if Kane never scored another goal in his life, he would still be worth his place in most sides on the planet. Happily for Tottenham fans, that doesn’t look like happening any time soon.