FIVE years ago, Harry Kane had the greatest individual season in Premier League history.
The England captain won both the Golden Boot as top scorer and Playmaker of the Season award as top assist-maker with 37 direct goal involvements in 35 games.
And this while playing for a team managed by the supposedly defence-obsessed Jose Mourinho.
Yet did Kane win the Footballer of the Year award from us ‘experts’ in the press box? Nope.
OK then, surely he would have been lauded by his peers and handed the PFA Player of the Year award?
Again, no.
Kane never won either gong during a decade of supreme individual prowess, often carrying a struggling Tottenham team on his broad shoulders.
Yet this is the thing with Kane.
He will soon become the greatest goalscorer in English football history and yet he is hugely under-appreciated.
While on England duty in March, Kane complained that he is ‘taken for granted’ and that people have become ‘bored’ with scoring feats.
And he is bang on. Kane will only be appreciated in England when he is gone.
He has already netted 13 times in seven games for Bayern Munich this season — including eight in four Bundesliga matches.
In the Premier League, no English centre-forward has scored more than once.
Largely because there are hardly any English centre-forwards operating in the English top flight.
Lose Kane and England will have no chance of winning the World Cup next summer.
Kane’s hat-trick against Hoffenheim this weekend means he has netted 468 career goals for club and country.
He has now passed the career total of the top flight’s all-time record scorer Jimmy Greaves, who racked up 464 goals for club and country.
Kane is already 59 clear of Alan Shearer and 60 ahead of Dixie Dean.
And in England colours, he is 21 ahead of previous record holder Wayne Rooney with 74 goals, having won fewer caps.
Last Wednesday, this supposed ‘flat-track bully’ got two against Chelsea — taking his tally against the world champions to ten.
He is also the leading scorer in North London derby history with 14 goals.
And while his record for England is often derided for the quality of the opposition, Kane is a World Cup Golden Boot winner who has scored more times in major tournaments than any other player to wear the Three Lions.
He has netted four against Germany — more than a certain Geoff Hurst — as well as three against both France and Italy.
Why, then, is Kane so undervalued? Perhaps it is the curse of the social-media age in which everything has to be s**t. Perhaps it is widespread anti-Spurs sentiment.
Or maybe it’s that Kane lacks sexiness and charisma, despite being a very decent bloke, who has become far more engaging and comfortable in his own skin since moving to Bayern.
But at a time when football is drowning in stats, the English footballer who is an absolute phenomenon in the only metric which truly matters — goalscoring — is never given his flowers.
They even tried the ‘flat-track bully’ thing in Germany for a while last season, which was odd given Kane’s hat-trick in his first appearance in Der Klassiker against Borussia Dortmund.
And, anyway, Kane then scored three times against the Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen in a Champions League tie and opened this season with a hat-trick against RB Leipzig.
Kane actually failed to score for England against Andorra or in Bayern’s 10-0 victory over hapless Auckland City at the Club World Cup, so we should forget the idea of a fairweather goalscorer.
As for Kane scoring a fair proportion of goals from the penalty spot, how could any Englishman who lived through the Nineties and Noughties ever decry an England player’s ability to be deadly from 12 yards?
Kane’s Bayern contract expires in 2027, so there is a good chance he will return to England next summer, allowing Bayern to receive a transfer fee.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Newcastle have all spent fortunes on vastly inferior centre-forwards this year.
All should have their eyes on Kane’s situation, even if he will turn 33 next summer. Even though a return to Spurs will always be the most likely option.
Until then, we will follow Kane’s Bayern heroics from afar. At the start of his third season in Bavaria, he is just two short of scoring a century for the club.
Kane is up there with Erling Haaland, Greaves, Shearer, Dean and any other goalscorer who has ever played the game, save for Pele, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
He really is that good. One day, we might recognise it.
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