Harry Kane is the best striker at the World Cup, and it’s not close

There are a lot of exceptional players who you can watch during this summer’s World Cup. But if you’re looking for the best pure goal scorer that you can hitch your wagon to while you watch this newly expanded tournament, then you’re going to want to watch England and their talismanic striker Harry Kane.

Kane looks a little dorky—tall, extremely English, mouth slightly agape—but looks are deceiving. Very few other players in world football are as good at putting the ball in the ol’ onion basket.

It’s fair to say England hasn’t seen a player like Harry Kane in a long time. In 2014 he burst practically fully formed from Tottenham Hotspur’s academy like Athena from the skull of Zeus, at a time when Tottenham desperately needed something great to happen. He had a couple of terrible loans as a youngster before finding his feet in the Premier League.

Former Spurs interim manager and irascible pundit Tim Sherwood likes to take credit for giving Kane his start in the game—he scored in his Tottenham first team debut and never looked back. But it was under Mauricio Pochettino that Kane thrived, quickly rising to become Spurs’ homegrown talisman, their leading goal-scorer for nine straight seasons, and, eventually, the club’s all-time leading scorer, eclipsing legendary striker Jimmy Greaves with 280 goals.

Kane’s something of a throwback striker – big and strong, he’s an exceptional finisher, but he also knows how to pick out a pass and find his teammates. His work off the ball is phenomenal. He formed a particularly potent partnership with South Korean superstar Son Heung-Min, one frequently providing the assist for the other, and the two took Spurs to the cusp of a Premier League title in more than one season.

Then he left for Bayern Munich. Spurs fans were very sad and/or angry.

In short – it hasn’t. Kane took Germany by storm, helped by joining the undisputed best team in the Bundesliga and backed up by an entire squad of outstanding players. This season alone at Bayern he has scored 36 goals and notched five assists, 17 more than his closest competitor. In three years at Bayern he’s scored a staggering 146 goals, putting him 7th on Bayern’s list of all-time goal scorers. He’s the favorite to win the Ballon d’Or this year, and he unquestionably deserves it.

As he ages, Kane has dropped deeper to receive the ball, often acting more like a No. 10 attacking midfielder rather than a goal poacher. He’s a complete player and is perfectly willing to set up his teammates if he’s not getting chances. But he’s absolutely lethal with the ball at his feet, a world-class finisher and penalty taker. He knows how to head the ball as well. World Cup opponents will try to limit his touches and influence. They’ll struggle to do so.

Kane is a striker who thrives on service and is one of the best pure finishers I’ve ever seen, but England boss Thomas Tuchel has named a World Cup squad that looks as though it’s geared more for defensive “meatwall” tactics and dominance on set pieces that has been so prevalent in the Premier League this season, rather than the free-flowing attack and tactical dominance like what we’ve seen from Bayern Munich this season.

That suggests that Kane might not have the same kind of goal output at the World Cup as what we’ve seen at Bayern, unless he heads in a bunch of corners (which he is, admittedly, also good at). England also have other goal threats—Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Barcelona loanee Marcus Rashford chief among them, but you can’t deny Kane’s talent.

If Kane isn’t among the top goal scorers at the World Cup this summer it’s because England failed him, not that he failed England.