Former Sunderland striker Kevin Phillips remains the only Englishman in history to win the European Golden Shoe award, something Harry Kane is yet to achieve.
Rae and Phillips played together at Sunderland, helping the side to promotion from the Championship in emphatic style only to take the Premier League by storm the following season.
Interestingly, Phillips remains the only Englishman in history to have won the European Golden Shoe award, which he picked up after his 30 Premier League goals for the Black Cats in 1999/00.
In doing so, Phillips is part of a star-studded list that features the likes of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez, Thierry Henry and Francesco Totti.
Kane is currently level with Mohamed Salah, Edinson Cavani and Lionel Messi with 24 league goals, and will do well to pull ahead to claim the award for his own this season.
Each season that goes by when Kane misses out, Kevin Phillips’ achievement appears all the more impressive.
“Kevin Phillips is as good a finisher as I’ve seen,” Rae told Open Goal.
“He ended up getting 30 Premier League goals [for Sunderland].
“Now they’re all talking about Harry Kane and Aguero and all that, the wee man [Phillips] was doing that in an average team.”
Wining the European Golden Shoe with a newly promoted side in the Premier League would be the stuff of legend nowadays, and Phillips’ 1999/00 scoring season probably deserves more appreciation, given the amount of credit that Kane has for his scoring for Tottenham.
The gulf in quality between Kane’s Tottenham and Phillips’ Sunderland is a fair point raised by Rae, and Kane will no doubt be hoping to emulate the Hitchin born forward in becoming the second Englishman to take home Europe’s most prestigious striker accolade.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
