Deserves a call-up

Harry Kane has been the key man for Spurs in cup competitions, scoring a hat-trick against Asteras, but is yet to start in the Premier League this season, writes Nick Mashiter.

Harry Kane’s club form has seen him tipped for an England call-up despite his struggle to secure a starting place at Tottenham.

The young striker has now scored seven goals in his last seven games following his match-winning free-kick at Aston Villa recently.

It took his tally this season to eight and team-mate Nacer Chadli has backed Kane for a call-up to the senior England squad.

The 21-year-old already has nine England under-21 caps and six goals after helping Gareth Southgate’s side to EURO 2015 recently. Roy Hodgson’s senior side host Slovenia in a EURO 2016 qualifier before a friendly in Scotland and Chadli believes his team-mate deserves a chance.

He said: “Why not? It is up to him and the manager of the national team. He has a lot of quality and he can have some impact in the game. He practises a lot of free-kicks like that in training. He has a great shot and he still practises it. That is good, he is a young talented player. I am very happy for him and pleased for him that he made an impact.”

But the Belgium international, who scored Tottenham’s first at Villa Park, admitted he did not know who the Spurs academy graduate was when he arrived from Twente last year.

“When I came to Tottenham I had not heard of him. But I am used to training with him and I can see that he is a very talented man and I can see that he has a great future,” added Chadli.

Chadli and Kane netted in the final six minutes in the 2-1 win at Villa but boss Mauricio Pochettino continued to resist calls to start the latter.

He has been the key man for Spurs in Cup competitions, scoring a hat-trick against Asteras, but is yet to start in the Premier League this season.

And Chadli admitted Pochettino will find it hard to leave the 21-year-old out for the Europa League trip to Asteras and the league visit of Stoke.

He said: “Everybody gets time to play as we play in the Europa League, in the Capital One Cup, the FA Cup soon and the Premier League, so there are a lot of competitions. Everybody gets to play minutes. So the manager has choices.”

Kane was named Man of the Match for his influential performance against Villa and hailed his late winner as one of the “greatest moments” in his fledgling Tottenham career.

He told Sky Sports 1: “Without a doubt it was one of the greatest moments for me in a Spurs shirt in my career so far. To be 1-0 down in an important game for us, we needed a win and to pull it back there at the end is a moment I won’t forget.”

Kane, who was sent on by Pochettino with just over 30 minutes left, added: “The manager said there’s plenty of time left, to be getting on the ball, you’ll get some chances so take one and obviously fortunately I was able to do that.”

As for taking the 89th-minute free-kick, Kane said: “He (Lamela) wanted it and he’d taken the one before, but I said ‘this one can be mine’ and obviously it ended up in the back of the net and it was great — a great result.”

© PA Sport