Only giants have trodden the path that Harry Kane walked at Wembley on Thursday when he strode out on to the pitch on a bitterly cold winter night, his four young children by his side, and beheld the array of trophies, honours, adulation and respect that awaited him.
It is just 16 days since Kane held his hands to his face, climbed up to the stage at the London Palladium and said ‘wow’ when Ronaldo ‘Il Fenomeno’ presented him with the Ballon d’Or trophy that anointed him the best player in the world.
Now, it sat before him on a plinth and Kane broke away from the England line-up and walked forward to hoist it aloft. He showed it to all the corners of the stadium and for a moment, it was framed against the giant tifo bearing his image and the words ‘England’s Finest’ that towered over one end of the ground.
But the Ballon d’Or is old news in the flood of honours that is coming Kane’s way in this golden summer of a great career. Kane had become the first Englishman to win the Ballon d’Or for a quarter of a century and on Thursday night he was to break the 37-year-old record held by Peter Shilton for the most England caps. He scored the winner, too. Of course, he did.
The occasion of England-Croatia in the Nations League was Kane’s 126th appearance in an England shirt and Shilton stepped forward to hand him a small case containing a crest to mark the achievement. Finally, the Prince of Wales showed his appreciation to the England captain by presenting him with a commemorative shirt with ‘Kane 126’ emblazoned on it.
It was a night to feel the weight of football’s history and the ghosts of greatness that people England’s heritage. Kane belongs in the company he now keeps. He belongs in the pantheon of the game because he is one of the deadliest strikers in history. He belongs in the pantheon because of the humility he has shown and the dedication he devotes to improvement.
Harry Kane celebrated his record-breaking England appearance with a finely struck penalty
Before kick-off, Kane’s history-making was celebrated with a commemorative shirt by the Prince of Wales
He belongs with Billy Wright, the first England player to 100 caps, and the man who set the England appearance record at 105 when he played for his country for the last time in 1959. He belongs with Bobby Charlton, who made it to 106 before the heartbreak of the 1970 World Cup quarter-final defeat to West Germany brought his international career to an end.
Kane belongs with Bobby Moore, Charlton’s rival as the greatest England player of all time, who reached the new mark of 108 caps in November 1973. That was one of the great numbers in English sport until Peter Shilton finally surpassed it. He reached 125 caps by the time he played his last game for England in the third-place play-off at the 1990 World Cup.
It is quite some lineage. And now it is Kane who holds the prize. And if this was hardly a momentous match, it was a momentous occasion. If you are tired of glorying in a player like Kane, a relentless striker, a wonderful passer, the sweetest striker of the ball you will ever see, a player of vision, a man who exudes the beauty of simplicity and the wonder of modesty, then you are tired of football.
The honours are rushing at him in a giddy, babbling flood. It may be that he reaches close to 200 caps before he retires and even if it already seems likely that that record will be broken by Jude Bellingham, who has 61 caps at the age of 23, Kane’s England goals tally, which stands at 92 after another goal against Croatia, will not be under threat for a generation or longer.
The gap, of course, is a tournament victory. That is what still separates Moore and Charlton from him. Kane is a dream of a player but he has not won the World Cup or the European Championship. What remains is the hope that he will put that right in the years that he has left in the game.
Winning the Nations League would not be quite the same but it would be a start and this victory over Croatia took England a small step closer to that goal. A convincing win over Spain in Madrid on Sunday would take them closer to their aim of finishing top of this group and getting a favourable draw in the quarter-finals in the spring.
Kane made his England debut in March 2015 when he was 21 and England’s future looks brighter now than it did when he broke through. More than an hour before the game, the men who will follow Kane and perhaps even chase his caps record, chatted animatedly on the pitch. Bellingham, Morgan Rogers, Anthony Gordon and Morgan Gibbs-White are the new breed.
Morgan Rogers opened the scoring inside the opening half-an-hour and celebrated with his trademark cold celebration
England had found themselves pegged back by Croatia after slopping defending drew the visitors level
Referee Morten Krogh was summoned to the monitor to review the penalty shout on Thursday
Kane returned to Wembley triumphant for the first time since his historic Ballon d’Or win
After the Kane festivities, the first half was an anti-climax. Twenty-four minutes of relative drudgery ensued before Kane exhibited the breadth of his talent once again to help put England ahead. He got the ball 30 yards out, looked up and drifted a beautiful diagonal pass out to the right and into the path of Bellingham. Bellingham volleyed it across goal and Rogers forced it over the line.
The second half began slowly, too, but 15 minutes into it, Croatia equalised. England failed to clear a corner, Jarell Quansah tried to head the ball back to Jordan Pickford and, as Kane watched on, Petar Sucic stole in and hooked the ball past the England goalkeeper into the roof of the net.
Quansah made some kind of amends three minutes later when he was dragged down in the box and Danish referee Morten Krogh awarded a penalty. It was Kane-time again. Kane took the kick and lifted it gently and with a touch of curl down the centre of the goal. Dominic Livakovic dived to his left and the ball sailed softly over his trailing leg and into the net.
Croatia had chances to draw level but could not take them. England made changes and young Rio Ngumoha, a winger of rare talent, another with a rich future ahead of him, another who will help to fill the void when the day comes for Kane to bid farewell to England, came on as a late substitute for Gordon.
And so Kane’s night of history began to draw to a close. In a 2-1 victory, he had made one and scored one. He remains as central to England’s hopes of ending more than 60 years without a trophy as he ever has been. In a career that has festooned him with garlands and left no one in doubt of his greatness, it is the only gap that remains.