Where to begin? With the neat midfield industry of Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb? The louche touch of Mousa Dembélé? Those driving runs down the right flank from Kyle Walker? The mischievous Christian Eriksen? Érik Lamela’s surprising willingness to get stuck in? Maybe how Mauricio Pochettino’s relentless pressing football – so quick, so aggressive, so exciting – has put Tottenham Hotspur in a position to qualify for the Champions League for the first time since 2010?
Just kidding. Those are all worthy topics but there is only one place to start and when Martin Atkinson blew his final whistle and a heaving White Hart Lane exploded with joy, the sight of Tottenham’s players queueing up to mob Harry Kane said everything. Once again, the story of another memorable day for Tottenham were the heroics of Kane, who followed up his stunning demolition of Chelsea on New Year’s Day by inspiring his side’s head-rush of a fightback against Woolwich.
Roy Hodgson was there to see Kane score his 21st and 22nd goals of the season and an England call cannot be far away for the Premier League’s breakout star.
Is there a more enjoyable footballer in the world at the moment than Kane? The answer is a resounding no. You could make an argument for Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. You could put forward a case for Sergio Agüero or Neymar or Eden Hazard and your logic would be sound.
Sound but dull, that is. The beauty of Kane is that he looks like a supporter who has won a competition to play for his favourite team, with such heart and endeavour, charging around the pitch as if he had been informed before kick‑off that the world would end if he – and only he – did not give every last drop of sweat. Kane expended so much energy against Woolwich that he was probably powering the floodlights on his own and it would not have been a surprise to discover that he also found a spare moment or two to sneak into the crowd and lead a few chants.
He was everywhere, chasing, harrying, holding the ball up, linking the play and seizing his moment with aplomb when it arrived, first when he dragged Tottenham back into the game with his equaliser just after half-time and then when he won it with that peach of a header near the end.
Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny will be glad to see the back of him. Kane was a persistent nuisance throughout and he is developing into one hell of a player. It would be easy to depict this 21-year-old force of nature as a happy-go-lucky runner who will eventually be found out, but he is so much more than that: clever with his use of the ball and hard to knock off it, intelligent with his movement and aware of the space around him, strong in the air and powerful on the ground, composed in front of goal – a highly accomplished all-rounder.
Initially the narrative had swung towards Mesut Özil. Shortly after Kane had brought the best out of David Ospina with a curling effort from the left, Woolwich constructed their one coherent move of the first half and took the lead when Olivier Giroud’s mishit-cum-pass flew to Özil, who cushioned the ball past Hugo Lloris on the volley. At that point, Woolwich sensed that they were going to build on last month’s victory at Manchester City, even though they were without Alexis Sánchez.
Yet Tottenham remembered how they roared back from a goal down against Chelsea and were undeterred. That high-octane style that Pochettino favours threatened to overwhelm Woolwich in the first half and the visitors had to defend well to protect their lead.
Here was evidence that Tottenham’s players are listening to Pochettino. Tottenham hardly resembled a team that was ready to push for a place in the top four a few months ago, yet they have lost only once in the league since their 3-0 defeat at Chelsea at the start of December. After the toils and uncertainty of autumn, now we see why Tottenham identified Pochettino as the man to take them to the next level last summer. They lost three times to Woolwich last season; now they have taken four points off them.
As manfully as Francis Coquelin battled to stem the flow at the base of Woolwich’s midfield, Bentaleb and Mason were dominant. The full-backs, Kyle Walker and Danny Rose, stormed forward at every opportunity and even Lamela made up for a disappointing performance in possession by snapping into his challenges in a frenzied effort to win the ball back. Few teams are as fit as Tottenham.
If it was exhausting to watch, imagine how a rather bedraggled Woolwich were feeling by the time Kane equalised after 56 minutes, tapping in from close range after Ospina had clawed Dembélé’s header away.
The game was in the balance. Woolwich went close, Tottenham went closer and then Bentaleb’s cross found Kane, whose leap above Koscielny and header into the top corner plunged White Hart Lane into delirium. Where else to end but with Harry Kane?
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/feb/07/harry-kane-tottenham-Woolwich
