Harry Kane is scoring for fun and its increasingly looking inevitable that he will beat Alan Shearer’s record of 36 goals in a calendar year.
In 2017, he’s scored more goals than Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and more even than West Brom and Crystal Palace.
The Tottenham striker’s sparkling form in front of goal this calendar year continued on Saturday as he scored twice in a 5-1 demolition of Stoke at Wembley.
Kane has found the net 33 times in 32 league matches, part of 50 goals in 48 games in all competitions for club and country.
The 24-year-old is closing in on a notable league landmark, set by the man to whom many see Kane as the natural heir – former Blackburn, Newcastle and England striker Alan Shearer.
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Kane’s 33 goals are equal to, or better than, four current Premier League clubs this year – Swansea and Burnley (both 33), Crystal Palace (31) and West Brom (30).
Across Europe’s top five leagues – England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – it puts him third on the list of league scorers in a calendar year, bettered only by Barcelona’s Lionel Messi (38 in 35) and Paris St-Germain’s Edinson Cavani (34 in 35).
With four fixtures left in 2017, Kane has a good chance of reaching the 37 goals he needs to surpass Shearer, who, like Kane, led the line for his country and was a talismanic figure for his hometown club (in Shearer’s case, Newcastle for whom he scored 206 league and cup goals).
Kane’s double against Stoke took him to 90 career Premier League goals, a mark he reached in 131 games.
Only Shearer has reached this number quicker in the competition’s history, doing so in 113 games en route to his record all-time tally of 260 goals in 441 games.
Shearer played until he was 35. If Kane plays until the same age, that gives him 11 years in which to score the 170 goals he needs to match Shearer’s tally, which he would manage by netting 15 goals a season until the end of the 2028-29 season.
