Harry Kane

Harry Kane has been named the world’s best player, completing a journey full of doubts and diversions with the Ballon d’Or at the London Palladium on Monday.

The 33-year-old beat Real Madrid and France striker Kylian Mbappe, and Barcelona’s Spanish teenager Lamine Yamal, to the sport’s biggest individual prize.

It rewards a career in which records have fallen for England, Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich.

Kane is England’s all-time top scorer with 91 goals and shares the record for most caps, 125, with Peter Shilton. He is Spurs’ record scorer with 280 goals in 435 appearances, and netted 73 goals in 65 games for Bayern and England during the 2025-26 season.

Often described as an “anti-superstar” for his humility, Kane has drawn praise from inside and outside football. Celebrating the biggest moment of his career, he posted: “Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.”

His path was far from smooth. Kane began with loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City.

He joined Orient at 17 in January 2011, making 18 appearances and scoring five goals. A year later he moved to Millwall, where some at Spurs feared the hostile atmosphere at the New Den might overwhelm him, but he scored nine goals in 24 starts.

At Leicester, he sat on the bench alongside future England team-mate Jamie Vardy when the Foxes lost a dramatic Championship play-off at Watford in May 2013.