Harry Kane may be beyond reproach with 62 goals as England’s leading scorer but he’s far from being a value bet to celebrate his 100th international cap by breaking the deadlock against Finland at Wembley.
The 31-year-old Londoner is the only Englishman to win Golden Boots at the World Cup and European Championship and has won three of those trophies in the Premier League with Tottenham and the Bundesliga’s equivalent with Bayern Munich last season.
His tally includes just eight goals in friendlies, which draws a healthy comparison to the 22 goals that Bobby Charlton scored in similar matches and the 16 Wayne Rooney netted in non-competitive internationals, so why the reluctance to back him to open the Tuesday night scoring? After all, his eight strikes in England’s 18 internationals since they started last season with a 1-1 draw with Ukraine on September 9 is a healthy return.
Well, during that run Kane’s only been the first goalscorer twice, in the 2-0 home win against Malta last November and in the 1-1 group-match draw with Denmark at the Euros.
Technically he’s a marginally better bet to score the last goal in the match which he has done against Scotland and Malta in the past 12 months. His goal in the latter international was scored after Enrico Pepe put the ball into the net and own goals don’t count for betting purposes. It also meant he cashed for punters who backed him for the first and last goals and to score at any time.
Kane has also been an anytime scorer against Italy, when he hit two, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final, when he scored the latest of his 22 penalties for the Three Lions.
There’s also the anomaly of his winner against Slovakia in Germany but that was in the first minute of extra-time which, once again, does not count as bets only cover 90 minutes.
It wouldn’t be the biggest shock if Kane bucked the trend and hit the opener in his milestone match at 5/2 with William Hill, Paddy Power, Betfred, Betfair and others.
However, the better option is for Jack Grealish to add to his effort against the Republic of Ireland at 17/2 with SpreadEx and Sporting Index by bagging the opener while Anthony Gordon, who should have found the net in Dublin, is 11/5 with the same firm to score at any time.
• Did you know Finland isn’t part of Scandinavia? The countries which form that region are Norway, Sweden and Denmark, although Finland is considered Nordic along with Iceland.
Anyway, the Finns were beaten 3-0 by Greece in their Nations League opener in Piraeus on Saturday but previously drew 2-2 with Scotland and lost 4-2 to Portugal in a run of seven matches in which they found the net.
England to win and both teams to score is 9/4 with Sky Bet and a 4-1 home victory is 16/1 with bet365.
• Jannik Sinner bookended the grand-slam season with victories at the Australian and US Opens and the Italian, who is also the world No.1, is 3/1 with Betway to retain his title in Melbourne in January.
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