Since then, football has learned to take the Tottenham striker a bit more seriously. At the time, he was hunting down the former Newcastle striker’s record for most Premier League goals in a calendar year – a mark he duly passed with a game to spare.
“They set the standards, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, so for the rest of us it’s about trying to catch them and get up there,” Kane had said earnestly in the Wembley corridor after seeing off Liverpool.
Sure enough, when he scored his second goal against Olympiakos in Tottenham’s new stadium and the graphic was shown of the players to get to 20 Champions League goals fastest, the world’s two most feared footballers were nowhere to be seen.
Harry Kane 24 games, Alessandro Del Piero 26, Ruud van Nistelrooy 27, Filippo Inzaghi 28 and Mario Gomez 32.
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“When you are winning games it definitely helps your relationship and hopefully we can build a strong one.
“We know we both want to win big competitions. That’s the team’s aim, that’s my aim and that is the manager’s aim. Hopefully I can help him do that this year and see where we can go.”
The return to form of Dele Alli provides the perfect foil for Kane to keep adding even more goals, and his second against Olympiakos came courtesy of another perfectly-delivered Christian Eriksen free-kick.
“He’s a fantastic player, a fantastic guy. It’s great to see him scoring goals, assisting goals and running at players.
“Then Christian came on very early and put some great balls and crosses in and maybe our the tempo up a bit and got an assist at the end.
“We need everyone, we need the team to perform if we want to go far in competitions.
“We know what we did last year in the knockout stages of the Champions League and we have to take that positive energy and try and do similar and go even further.”