Spurs Striker Harry Kane: Hype is the biggest challenge
Harry Kane’s second season with Spurs started off slowly but has picked up in recent months. Now with two great seasons, the hype surrounding him will only continue to grow.
The pressure to perform at a high level in sports is very difficult, even more so in football where supporters demand a lot out of the players. But when players perform very well in a short span, expectations skyrocket and become almost unobtainable to achieve on a consistent basis.
For Spurs’ Harry Kane this is what befell the 22-year-old early on in his sophomore campaign as Mauricio Pochettino’s only out-and-out striker after both Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado were released and sold last summer, respectively.
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No matter how much this notion that Kane isn’t a one-season wonder now, that wasn’t the case through the first nine weeks of the 2015-16 Premier League season.
And although it was premature to judge at the time, looking back on it, there was a legit concern that someone like Harry Kane would find it difficult to repeat the success he had a year ago with teams now paying more attention to the England international after he burst into the footballing world with an astounding 31 goals in all competitions and 21 in the Premiership.
So what was the issue with Kane’s early season struggles?
A part of it was definitely trying too much to show that he wasn’t a one-season wonder with one goal in nine games before he returned to scoring ways following a hat-trick against Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium.
But something that was brought to light, was the word hype and how Kane believes it’s hurting young English players and perhaps just about everyone after they have produced a fine season after bursting onto the scene from out of nowhere.
“I think there’s a lot of hype,” Harry Kane told Shortlist (quotes via London Evening Standard).
“Nowadays if you have two or three good games then there’s automatically this big hype around you that you’re going to be the next big thing or the next big English player to come through.”
“That’s difficult, because there’s a lot of attention that surrounds that, whether it’s nightclubs or girls or money or things like that – you have to be able to cope with that.”
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“Obviously it is a profession at the end of the day, and we do get paid big amounts of money, but it’s how you cope with that. I think as a younger player you have to have your head screwed on.”
“For me, I’ve got good people around me – good family, good friends that kept me level-headed and I still have that now.”
“So the most important thing is the football, and the more the young kids realise that and focus on just the football, the better they’ll be and probably the more money they’ll earn in the future anyway.”
A big reason why hype always surrounds players, is mainly down to fans and their unrealistic expectations. They love their clubs and players so much that they sometimes become blinded by the fact that footballers are humans and mistakes will always happen.
It’s mostly about staying realistic through it all.
Players can and will go on a goalless streak. Which is normal. And this is why it’s never a good idea to expect that just one good season — or in Kane’s case, two good years — will be the norm for the England international.
The main reason why the 22-year-old has been able to have back-to-back 20-plus goal seasons is because he constantly works on his craft every single day in training.
Harry Kane is known for his goal scoring exploits but at times his dedication to always be the best player goes unnoticed. Hard work in the gym and extra time spent with his coaches on the finer points of being an all-around striker has helped him greatly.
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“I think a bit of it is obviously getting older, your muscles develop more, you get a bit more power, but I worked hard on it as well,” Kane added. “I put a lot of work in the gym on my power, and my lower body side of it, because I felt like I needed to get a bit more pace in my game.”
“With the finishing, I’ve always fancied myself as a finisher and obviously the more you practice and the older I got, getting a bit more power behind the shots, it just kind of naturally turned into it.”
Again, Harry Kane has answered his critics magnificently and while he doesn’t have to constantly score at least 20 goals per season, expecting the 22-year-old to not suffer from a dry spell from here on out is, at best, foolish thinking.