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The World Is Too Much With Us

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It is irksome when people argue without them or anyone else knowing what they’re arguing about. Is Harry Kane world class?

Without defining what is meant by ‘world class’ the winner of that argument is normally the one who shouts the loudest/is the most sarcastic/is the smartest arse/cites incorrect ‘facts’. Then, when all the sound and fury is over, we still don’t know whether Harry is world class or not, simply that two people disagree about it, loudly.

Some of those who say our hero is not world class argue that he hasn’t won major trophies with Spurs. By that argument Gareth Bale was not world class at Spurs but he is indeed world class at Real Madrid. Now, however ‘world class’ is defined, one would have to think that it is a measure of a player’s intrinsic ability and worth that it cannot change one way or another with the team-mates a player has around him and whether they together are capable of winning a trophy.

So either Bale is ‘world class’ or he is not, irrespective of who he plays with. If he now moves, say, to Crystal Palace, would that mean he is no longer world class? Another argument I witnessed had a Spurs supporter claiming that Harry is world class because he has now scored as many goals as Cristiano Ronaldo did in the Premier League, in 73 fewer games. But a fellow called Don Hutchinson shouted loudly – mocking the silly Spurs fan – that the two could not be compared because Ronaldo is a winger!

Well, to my mind Ronaldo might start out wide but he is most certainly not a winger. Anyone who notes the positions, mostly central, that he takes up when Real Madrid attack would have to concede this. Also the fact that he is always his team’s leading scorer should conclusively prove that he is a pure striker and relied on more than anyone else for goals. There’s lots of other nonsense being said about whether Harry is ‘world class’ or not, but nobody defines the term, or what boxes to tick when deciding. I am certainly not arguing one way or another, because I couldn’t care less about a meaningless epithet attached to a player I prefer to think of simply as ‘one of our own’!

A clue to what ‘world class’ might mean: I once had the privilege of chatting to former Charlton Athletic striker Eddie Firmani, still I believe the only player to score 100 goals in both England and Italy. Firmani also had in his CV that he coached Pele at New York Cosmos. Comparing Pele to Diego Maradona, Firmani said: ‘Maradona was very good, but Pele made everyone else in his team look brilliant too.’ That’s what I’d call world class.

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