What The FA’s Apology To Harry Kane Says About English Football

What The FA’s Apology To Harry Kane Says About English Football
16:39, 23 Apr 2018

Is there any point discussing England’s hopes at the World Cup in Russia? For once, that is not a disparaging comment on the chances of Gareth Southgate’s men, but a genuine question: does anyone actually want them to do well?  

Balloon-pricking, or building players up, simply to knock them back down again, is something that is deeply ingrained in the English psyche. So deeply, in fact, that it now seems to have filtered through to the national team’s governing body.

In the wake of Saturday’s FA cup semi-final, the FA have apologised to Tottenham and Manchester United for posting the caption “what’s in your pocket” alongside an unrelated video of Chris Smalling saying “Harry Kane”. Both clubs might have dismissed it as cheap banter borne of the social media age and its need to engage ‘the young’ -  but all parties were thought to be unimpressed.

This masochistic love of failure has become so institutionalised that the country’s best striker, who in most parts of the world would be a God, is fast becoming a subject of ridicule. Not simply because he didn’t play well against United, but because some weeks ago, he committed the heinous crime of claiming a goal against Stoke that he must have got a very faint touch on, seeing as it was awarded to him by an appeals panel.

The England team has given its fans very little to be excited about for the past two decades. In that light, perhaps it’s only fair that its stars are knocked off their pedestal. Why Kane, though? There is virtually nothing about him, personally or professionally, that says “pampered yet underachieving English footballer”.  

For the first time in three seasons, it looks as if the Golden Boot will elude him and yet he is still, by quite some margin, the best English goalscorer around. In the list of Premier League top scorers, Raheem Sterling comes next with 18 to Kane’s 26, followed by Jamie Vardy on 17. After that comes Glenn Murray, with 12.  

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The only blemish on the 24-year-old’s reputation was his questionable winning of a penalty at Anfield in Spurs’ 2-2 draw with Liverpool in February. It did not come from a blatant dive, more a conscious decision to go down with Loris Karius hurtling towards his feet.

This phenomenon of being in the tent, but urinating into it anyway doesn’t exclusively affect Kane. It’s what the English footballing public have always done. Wayne Rooney will not get the credit he deserves until he retires, nor was there any real reason for Steven Gerrard to be mocked so often at other Premier League grounds.

In Egypt, where droves of fans spoiled their ballot in the presidential election to vote for Mo Salah, it must all come across as a little strange. Of course, Kane is no stranger to silencing his critics and you get the impression that the louder the cries against him, the higher he sets his sights. It could be a long summer, though, particularly on current evidence; exhaustion appears to be setting in and in the five games since he made his return from ankle ligament damage, he hasn’t looked 100% fit.

What will be at the forefront of Southgate’s mind is that the Tottenham man has 12 goals in 23 international games. The Three Lions may be outsiders, tipped by most bookmakers at around 16/1 to lift the World Cup, but they certainly will not be progressing very far without a world-class out-and-out striker. The FA will be only too aware of that.

Maybe there’s a point to be made about Tottenham more generally. Mauricio Pochettino rarely shows his frustration to the extent he did on Saturday, but even he seemed to be growing exasperated at this sense that competing with the best, even if falling agonisingly short, is something to be sneered at.

It’s possible that Kane will never be universally loved, regardless of how he performs in Russia and beyond. That is something few of his rivals around the world will have to contend with. 

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