Harry Kane now shares England’s appearance record with Peter Shilton on 125 caps. The cap that makes it his alone is due at Wembley on 12 November, against the Croatia side that ended his first World Cup. The angle comes from UEFA’s report of Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Czechia.
On Tuesday night at Wembley, Harry Kane set up England’s opener against Czechia and scored the other two. The goals took him to 91 for his country, and the appearance took him to 125 caps, level with Peter Shilton’s all-time England record. The brace also made him the Nations League’s top scorer, with six. One more game and the record is his alone, and the fixture list says that game is England against Croatia at Wembley on 12 November.
Shilton’s 125 caps belonged to a goalkeeper whose international career ran for two decades and ended at the 1990 World Cup. Kane’s have taken eleven and a half years, from a substitute debut against Lithuania in 2015 in which he scored. Goalkeepers are built for longevity. Strikers are not, and a centre-forward matching a goalkeeper’s appearance record says as much about Kane’s durability as the goals do about his finishing.
The goals are almost beyond comparison now. Kane is 38 clear of Wayne Rooney, England’s second-highest scorer on 53. He is England’s all-time World Cup top scorer, with 14 goals to Gary Lineker’s 10, and level with Alan Shearer on seven at the European Championship. Across major tournaments, only Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé have scored more. He has scored against 41 different nations. His 91 goals have come in 125 appearances, almost three goals in every four games. He also has 19 assists, joint fourth on England’s all-time list. The record that remains is not a number.
It is the trophy. Kane has played in eight major tournaments since 2016 and won none of them. This summer England went out of the World Cup in the semi-finals to Argentina. The appearance record measures how long he has been there. It cannot measure what he has been there for.
Which is why the opponent for cap 126 is so fitting. Croatia were the team that beat England in the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup in Moscow, the tournament at which a 24-year-old Kane won the Golden Boot. Eight years on the roles have reversed. Last Saturday England won 7-0 in Rijeka, Croatia’s heaviest defeat, and Kane scored twice. The record that took Shilton twenty years will fall against the side that ended Kane’s first serious chance of a trophy.
Three days later comes the harder question. England travel to Spain, the world champions who beat Argentina in the final in July and who won 2-1 in Croatia on Tuesday to reach the quarter-finals with an 11-match winning run intact. England have already lost to them once in this campaign, 3-2 at Wembley in September. Goal’s verdict after Tuesday was that Kane is one game away from history. The game after that will say more about whether England have closed the gap on the team that has done what Kane has not.
Records like Shilton’s are usually marked with a presentation before kick-off and a framed shirt. Kane’s will come with a better symmetry: the cap against the team that ended his first World Cup, and then, ninety minutes of football later, the team that holds the trophy he is still missing. Kane has spent eleven years being judged on two things at once, the numbers he keeps adding and the prize he keeps missing. November will add one more number, and then test the other.
Sources: The FA, UEFA, beIN Sports, Free Press Journal, Goal.
