Alan Shearer has heaped praise on Tottenham striker Harry Kane and called him a “single-minded and cold-blooded No9”.
Kane scored a hat-trick, including two penalties, in England’s 4-0 win against Bulgaria on Saturday as Gareth Southgate’s side kept up their perfect start to the Euro 2020 qualifiers.
That’s three wins from three now with 14 goals scored and just the one conceded.
Kane has scored five of them and three have been from the penalty spot.
Writing in his column in the Sun, Shearer said, “I just love Harry Kane’s confidence and self-belief when it comes to taking penalties.
“Of his 25 goals for England, eight have come from the spot. But even if 24 of his 25 goals were penalties, it does not matter one jot as a centre-forward.
“He is a single-minded and cold-blooded No9 who has an insatiable desire and hunger to score — and that makes him such a ruthless penalty-taker.
“I’ve read about how obsessed he is with practising them and that is what you have to do as your team’s penalty- taker — I was exactly the same.”
100% Kane
Kane has a 100% record from the penalty spot for England and that’s helped him to a goal-scoring record for his country.
In the game against Bulgaria, he became the first player since Gary Lineker to score 23+ goals for England in just 40 games.
It led to the former England striker and Match of the Day host to react on Twitter.
Hat-trick Harry. 2 penalties absolutely buried again. I was @England penalty taker for 8 years and only got 4 ( I think) in 80 games….yes, I know, I may have missed one as well.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) September 7, 2019
Talking on the ITV coverage of the game (Saturday, 4.30pm), Gareth Southgate also heaped praise on Kane’s penalty-taking prowess.
“He has an incredible process,” Southgate said. “It’s a brilliant example for any youngster on how to master a technique.”
Both of Kane’s penalty’s on Saturday were unsaveable. One went to the goalie’s right and one to his left, but even guessing the right way for the second left Plamen Iliev with no chance of keeping the ball out of the net.
You can see from the picture above just how far Iliev was away from the ball.
Kane has missed one penalty for Tottenham since the start of the 2017/18 season, but just the one from 10 spot-kicks, giving him an impressive conversion rate of 90%.