Kane leaves fellow England strikers trailing in his wake

Hurricane in 2024, Harry Kane in 2026. Texas took a hammering from the elements two summers ago, but last week it was the England captain blowing away obstacles in his path there. Having towered over his compatriots as a goalscorer for a decade, it was no surprise that he set his country’s World Cup campaign in motion with their first two goals against Croatia.

Since the summer of 2014, when Kane was about to establish himself at Tottenham Hotspur, he has scored a combined 389 goals in league games for his club and all England appearances – 230 more than any other Englishman across Europe’s big five leagues and the national team in that 12-year period. The next on the list, a speck in the distance, is Jamie Vardy on 159.

Restricting the focus to the three years since he left Spurs for Bayern Munich in 2023, Kane has hit 169 goals for club and country in all competitions. Of his World Cup teammates, Ivan Toney has got the closest to Kane on a mere 76, with all but four of those scored since he moved to Saudi Arabia. Ollie Watkins is next on 70.

Kane would still be among his country’s top eight scorers since 1966 even if you only included his penalties (while other players counted all their goals) – he has converted 24 of them from 28 attempts. But before anyone dismisses his scoring feats because spot-kicks are so prominent, he would still be England’s all-time leading scorer if you took away those 24 penalties, but his total of 81 goals including penalties comfortably pushes Wayne Rooney into second place on 53.

England’s other two goals against Croatia came from Jude Bellingham of Real Madrid, and Marcus Rashford, who spent last season on loan to Barcelona: it was the first game in which four England goals were scored by a player or players whose most recent club football was played abroad since February 1993, when David Platt, of Juventus, scored four times against San Marino.

Talking of English players exploring new horizons, the England team will face a first visit to Mexico or Canada in 40 years if they progress a little in the coming weeks. Aside from their first World Cup venture – in 1950 in Brazil – each of England’s World Cup appearances has come in countries where they had played a match no more than 13 years before the tournament.

If England win their group, they would face the prospect of their round-of-16 fixture being their first game in Mexico since the Hand of God defeat to Argentina in June 1986. Finishing second would set up a round-of-32 tie in Toronto, while progression via a third-place finish would put them on course for a round-of-16 match in Vancouver.

England played their opening fixture against Croatia near Dallas, which is not the only Texan city on the World Cup map connected to a former English top-flight player: Stuart Dallas played for Leeds United and Stewart Houston for Manchester United.

England’s match against Croatia produced their first 4-2 win at a World Cup since the 1966 final – a gap of 55 World Cup games. In their last 674 internationals, it was also their first 4-2 victory having been level at 2-2 since that legendary match at Wembley.

Having just helped Arsenal to a first league title in 22 years, Declan Rice will hope to end England’s run of 22 major tournaments without success since 1966. The omens for his next match are good. Rice has played 29 weekday games this season for Arsenal and England and not lost any (one on a Monday, 11 on Tuesday, 13 on Wednesday and four on Thursday); England will play Ghana on Tuesday.

That fixture will complete a run of six opponents for England from the six different confederations – their first ever such sequence: Uruguay, Japan, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Croatia and Ghana.

England have won their past 10 games away from these shores – seven away matches and three on neutral ground – and will look to their captain in their quest to continue that record run. England, meanwhile, have led for a total of 12 hours and 33 minutes with Kane on the pitch since the Euro 2024 final, but, in that period, they have not trailed for a single minute with their talisman involved.

Photograph by Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images