What can you say about Harry Kane? That hasn’t been said already, thousands of times, in every newspaper, on every tv channel (including Al Jazeera), on the radio and all over the web? Even Her Majesty the Queen apparently said “well I’d have his children”. Apparently.

The man is a genius, a star, a god, and now: national treasure. He’s the league’s top scorer, which is great for Spurs, but to come on as a substitute for England and score within 80 seconds. So now yer gonna believe us, so now yer gonna believe us…

When I started my car this morning at 8.15, they were talking about Harry’s debut for England. When I arrived home from Tai Chi at 10.15, they were talking about Harry’s debut for England. This was not Radio Harry Kane, nor even Radio Tottenham, but BBC.

When Harry came on last night, 83,000 England fans all forgot their club loyalties and embraced the Man of the Hour. Standing ovation. When he scored, just a minute later, he could have become Prime Minister, had an election been called right then. People are building shrines to him all over the country. Pilgrims are walking from Tibet and Machu Pichu all the way to Stratford to see the school he (and David Beckham, coincidentally) attended. They’re printing Harry Kane postage stamps. There’s even talk of incorporating his saintly head onto the Union Jack permanently.

But I can’t help but think, amid all this fervour and press adoration: what happens when he has a minor ‘slump’? As all strikers do. Even the Jimmy Greaveses and Gary Linnekers and Alan Shearers go through bad times. Droughts. Can’t score. Confidence wanes. And the same press who are presently licking Harry’s boots clean after every sensational match he plays, can become instantly brutal, fickle and exceptionally nasty. They build up heroes and they then publicly castrate them. It sells newspapers. Gets higher rankings on Google.

And how would Harry cope with that? At just 21 years of age?? Its easy to ‘ignore’ the wonderful things everyones writing about you, to try and keep it all from going to your head, from believing the hype. But when it turns to shit, its much harder to ignore. When the insults and abuse are everywhere.

I sincerely hope that Harry plays for the next 15 years (for Spurs; telling Real Madrid to keep their £300 million and just FUCK OFF!!!!), scoring every week, hitting the winning hat-trick in the 2019 Champions League Final, scoring 9 against France when we win the 2018 World Cup and never hitting a lean spell. But life, and football careers, generally isn’t quite like that.

I need to work on my Harry Kane scrapbook. Lot of work to do today.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx