Kane’s next challenge: how can he become the world’s best striker?

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Following Harry Kane’s record-setting Christmas week, what must the Tottenham striker do to be recognised as the world’s finest centre-forward?

Harry Kane just scored six goals in two games to beat two records one didn’t think would be broken, not by Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane anyway. The first was Alan Shearer’s record of 36 Premier League goals in a calendar year, set in 1995. Kane had already equalled that with his first hat-trick, so his opener in Tottenham’s 5-2 thrashing of Southampton.

The second was the highest number of goals from the strikers around Europe’s top five leagues in 2017. Leo Messi had 54. Kane began the Saints game on 53. By the end he had 56 and finished above Messi. No, seriously. That’s not a typo. A Tottenham striker finished above Leo Messi, the world’s best player, in goalscoring.

All this to say: is Harry Kane the world’s best striker? After all he’s leading goalscorer in the Premier League and Champions League and bar the month of August nothing seems capable of stopping him from scoring.

But… he’s not quite there yet. You could say the Tottenham man has had a better 2017 (individually) than, say, Robert Lewandowski and Luis Suárez. But to be classified better than them? Not yet. To do that he has to do one more thing, one thing with Lewandowski and Suárez have managed to do with frequently and showstopping ability: score in the Champions League knockout rounds.

Sure, Kane has dominated the domestic front and the group stages, but if he wants to be the best, he has to do it on the biggest occasions. And in the modern era, that’s the latter stages of the Champions League. They don’t have to be wonderful goals, they just have to be there and in high numbers.

Tottenham will be praying he does find his scoring touch in the knockout rounds – they’ll surely need it if they want to advance beyond Juventus in the round of 16. If Tottenham dare to dream of going even further then Kane’s goals will be utterly essential.

Here’s thing: if Harry Kane does manage to take his Tottenham goalscoring heroics into the Champions League knockout rounds (and there’s nothing so far to indicate that he won’t) then he will surely have to be crowned the best striker in the world. And that’s something every Tottenham fan, whose number include Kane himself remember, dreams of being able to say.