Forget Yamal & Mbappé: Harry Kane is simply the best player in the world right now

When Harry Kane stroked home what proved to be the winning goal in the Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday night, he neatly summarised everything that has made him the best centre-forward on the planet: The ease with which he finds space, the calm and composure, the knack of making exceptionally difficult finishes look straightforward.

Ask most fans around the globe who the best player in the world is, and most would likely answer that it was Kylian Mbappé or Lamine Yamal. A fair few would probably still insist that it was Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo as they cling on to their heroes’ past glories. But is it time we started talking about Kane in the same breath?

Why Harry Kane is the best player in the world right now

Kane’s statistics are, it goes without saying, absurd. His 31 Bundesliga goals put him well out in front in the race for the European Golden Boot. His has 49 goals in all competitions. Even Messi only scored more in a season six times, and there may well be plenty of games left to play with. He could well reach 60 if Bayern Munich get past Real Madrid in the Champions League. Messi got to 60 twice.

Yamal, by contrast, has 21 goals in 41 games to go with 16 assists (Kane has five). Mbappé has 39 goals in 37 games and six assists. Both are ridiculously impressive totals. Kane’s numbers just happen to be a little bit better still.

Kane is scoring or providing a goal every 60.8 minutes, which borders upon the obscene. Mbappé, every 68.2 minutes. For Yamal, meanwhile, it’s a goal contribution every 91.5 minutes. Kane is simply that bit more lethal, more reliable, better at what he does. The xG stats bear the same though out – Kane is the most efficient of the three, although Yamal runs him close.

You can quibble about the relative quality of the competition in the Bundesliga and La Liga, certainly, but Kane’s 11 goals in 10 Champions League appearances, on top of his record-breaking scoring at international level, makes it plain that it doesn’t really matter who Kane is up against.

And Kane has the habit of scoring crucial goals, too – winners, equalisers, goals which change matches and produce results. It’s not as though the same can’t be said of the most obvious rivals for the title of best in the world, also players who win games by themselves, but that strike against Real was simply yet another goal which could substantively change the direction of Bayern’s season. He’s scored plenty of those.

Kane doesn’t have the all-round technical quality of Yamal or Mbappé, perhaps, nor is he as fast. The two Spanish-based stars both have broader skill sets. But very few strikers in the history of the game have been better at their job than Kane. His finishing, movement, first touch and instinctive understanding of how to open up goalscoring opportunities are peerless in the modern game. Yamal and Mbappé know many tricks. Kane knows one big one, and the impact of that single, focussed skillset is colossal.

Yamal is so young that he may, like Messi, transcend all those around him in time. Mbappé has been so obscenely productive throughout his career – with little sign of slowing down any time soon – that he will likely be remembered as a greater player than Kane when their respective careers are done, especially with a World Cup win under his belt. But right now, this season, Kane has outshone his peers.

Will Harry Kane win the Ballon d’Or - and how much would it matter?

The legacy that Kane’s season deserves is the Ballon d’Or. Should he win that trophy later this year, he would become the first Englishman to claim it in 25 long years, since Michael Owen won back in 2001. Unfortunately for Kane, being better than his rivals for the award won’t be enough to win it.

The Ballon d’Or has always been awarded based not only on individual performances, but on the titles that those performances contributed to. And this is a World Cup year – the winner of the Ballon d’Or will likely be the best performer in North America over the summer.

That could be Kane, of course, if England have a deep run. They start among the pre-tournament favourites, albeit behind Yamal’s Spain and Mbappé’s France in the betting odds. But Kane will either need to lift the World Cup in July, or to reach at least the semi-finals and to win the Champions League. Neither outcome is implausible, but neither can be described as probable.

Even beyond the end-of-year gongs, Kane probably needs a major continental or international trophy under his belt to secure his status as a modern great. All of the players who enter conversations as being among the best of their era have at least one or two of the very biggest winners’ medals in their collection. Kane, thanks to his long years carrying Tottenham Hotspur, does not.

This summer could be his best chance to correct that. Get past Real in their quarter-final, and Bayern will start to look like the favourites for the Champions League, especially with Arsenal starting to look rather frayed. England won’t be the outright favourites for the World Cup, but they will have every chance of going far if they can hit the ground running.

But there’s every likelihood that Yamal or Mbappé end up lifting the Ballon d’Or this winter if their teams win through in Europe or in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The big awards have always factored team performance in, in a way that arguably runs somewhat contrary to their stated aim to identify the best individual players. Kane could be the best player in the world across the 2025/26 season and get no recognition for it.

That would be a crying shame for a player who has matured into the best out-and-out striker of his generation, and one of the best of all time. His legacy deserves – perhaps demands – the shift in status he will earn if he does wind up with a World Cup and a Ballon d’Or by the end of the year. It would only be a fair reflection of where he stands in the pantheon right now.

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