Wayne Rooney has revealed that he predicted Harry Kane would break England’s all-time goalscoring record after only four appearances, comparing the Manchester United target to Cristiano Ronaldo for his innate ‘selfishness’ in front of goal.
On Thursday night, Kane surpassed Rooney as England’s all-time leading scorer when he converted a penalty in the Three Lions’ 2-1 victory over Italy in Naples.
The Tottenham forward had the same opportunity to do so at the World Cup in Qatar, but he missed a crucial penalty against France in the quarterfinals, thus sending his country home.
A young Kane was on the pitch when Rooney put himself top of the leaderboard, again from the spot, against Switzerland in 2015, with the Spurs talisman admitting on Thursday that his former England teammate told him he’d be handing him the record one day.
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“Harry had scored only three England goals at that point — but I said those words because I knew he could do it,” Rooney wrote in his column for The Times on Friday.
“Even then, with only four caps under his belt, I knew he could become England’s greatest scorer if he kept going the way he was and I wanted to give him encouragement.”
At just 29-years-old and looking as sharp in front of goal as ever, Kane has every chance of opening up a huge gap between himself and the rest.
And Rooney predicts that the striker will surpass an incredible 70 come his international retirement, likening his single-mindedness in front of goal to Ronaldo.
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“Knowing Harry, it’s not something that will go to his head,” Rooney added. “He will kick on and, in fact, I believe that when he stops playing he will leave the England record in a place where it will be very difficult for someone else to break it.’
“He wants to be like Poland’s Robert Lewandowski, a goal machine who is still at the very top in his mid-thirties, and he has it in him to make that happen. I think Harry will finish with an England goals total well into the 70s.
“The only other person I’ve seen like that is Cristiano Ronaldo and both he and Harry have what you would call a good kind of selfishness, an obsession with goals that is in-built.
“It is important to their success.”
