Harry Kane has backing from inside the England dressing-room to finish his fairy-tale season as player of the year. Striker Kane maintained his incredible form by scoring a debut England goal against Lithuania just 79 seconds after stepping off the substitutes’ bench and is poised to be handed his first start against Italy on Tuesday night.
It is expected Kane will partner captain Wayne Rooney, who has warned Italy to expect a more “aggressive” England when the two nations meet in Turin.
Kane has scored 29 goals in all competitions for Tottenham Hotspur this season and the 21-year-old is threatening to win a clean sweep of young player and player of the year awards.
Along with this season’s other strongest candidates, Kane has already been asked to keep the date of the Football Writers’ Association Award free and would follow in the footsteps of Gareth Bale in 2013 if he won both PFA awards and the FWA trophy.
Fabian Delph, the England and Aston Villa midfielder, said: “He will get my vote. There are a few contenders, but I will pick wisely and I cannot see why I won’t pick Harry.”
The Manchester United central defender Chris Smalling, who is hoping to start with Kane for England against Italy, added: “He will definitely be in the running. He is on my shortlist.”
Theo Walcott knows exactly what it is like to become an overnight national hero, having shot to prominence with a hat-trick against Croatia in 2008 aged just 19.
“You need to make sure it doesn’t go to your head,” said Walcott. “Looking at that and Harry, he’s not that sort of guy. He’s very nice and down to earth. Just play your football, that’s all you need to do. You don’t need to worry about anything else.
“He’s worked hard, I’ve seen it first-hand. Some of the stuff he can do with the ball is fantastic. He’s dealt with it all season. He’s been scoring goals and the pressure has been on him. You can see he’s playing with a smile on his face every day.
“Enjoy playing football and be positive, which he has been. As long as he continues to do that, the best will come from him.”
Italy helped dump England out of the World Cup at the group stages with a 2-1 victory in Brazil last summer.
But England have bounced back from that disastrous tournament with seven successive victories ahead of the Turin friendly.
Rooney believes the turnaround in form has been helped by getting in the faces of their opponents and going on the front foot.
“The players are so quick and when we lose the ball we want to be aggressive and win it back quickly,” said Rooney. “I am sure you have heard the manager talk about those little 'furies’, that when we lose the ball we have to win it back as quickly as possible.
“There are times when you go and don’t get it, but that is where the defence probably doesn’t get the credit it deserves because they are pushing in right behind us to close the space off. With the players we have got, we have to play like that.
“You don’t want to go into games and teams enjoy playing against you, you want teams to look at England and think 'We know we have a tough game. It is going to be physically hard against them, we are going to have to defend and we are going to have to be good on the ball to keep the ball’. That is what we want teams to feel when they come up against us.
“It’s maybe not so much nasty, but being aggressive. Not in a bad way in terms of we are putting really hard tackles in, but we are getting up to the ball quickly, we are harrying teams and making them make mistakes. At the minute we have the tactics right.
“There will obviously be times where you have to drop back and concede a little bit of possession because you can’t do it for 90 minutes. We have to judge when the time is right and when we feel we have the opposition pinned in. That is when we go and win the ball and try and put teams in uncomfortable positions.”
Rooney accepts that Italy will provide England with a much bigger challenge than any side they have faced since the World Cup, but the 29-year-old insists there is a buzz around the national team again.
“It will be a different game again on Tuesday,” said Rooney. “Italy will be very good on the ball and there will be times when they are able to play out, so we have to make sure we pick our moments right and not get picked off. There will be times when we go, times when we sit off.”
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