They were 2015’s shooting stars, scorers of a combined 60 goals for their respective clubs last year. Romelu Lukaku and Harry Kane meet at Goodison Park on Sunday in a game that has a subplot. This is part of their private battle for the Golden Boot.
Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Odion Ighalo are the underdogs in contention. The Everton and Tottenham top scorers feel like the pedigree performers.
In Kane’s case, it shows how quickly perceptions can change. He struck 29 times in 2015, despite failing to find the net in his first eight club games this season. He acquired an irresistible momentum but, even when it was lost, weathered that troubled spell to illustrate his staying power.
That Kane was loaned out to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester is an indication that his rise to prominence caught most by surprise.
That Lukaku, who was born two months before the Englishman in 1993, cost Chelsea a fee rising to £17 million (Dh92.3m) when he was just 18 is a sign that he was touted for greatness at a younger age.
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He was nicknamed the “baby Drogba” long before Kane was likened to Teddy Sheringham, another Londoner to prove prolific in Tottenham’s No 10 shirt. Yet 2015 was a breakthrough year for each. Lukaku finished it with 31 Everton goals, including 11 in his last 10 games.
“His calendar year has been very impressive,” said manager Roberto Martinez. His range of the physical and the technical has made for a formidable combination, especially now it is allied with consistency.
“He is such a unique No 9,” added Martinez. “Normally No 9s master one aspect — they can hold the ball up, they are strong or they have got pace, they are finishers — but I think Rom can be everything. He is in a very mature stage of his career.”
Like Kane, he has shown a reliability at an age when others were erratic. Like Kane, Lukaku is that most modern of breeds, a lone striker with the ability to lead the line on his own while delivering goals. Like Kane, too, any injury to Lukaku would seem a colossal blow.
Each, though, is no solo act. They are the front men for boy bands, in tune with precocious partners. Six of Lukaku’s goals have been assisted by Gerard Deulofeu, with inch-perfect supply line from the right flank. Kane has developed an instinctive understanding with Dele Alli.
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Perhaps more than any other Premier League clubs, these two are spearheading youthful generations, with Kane and Alli joined by Eric Dier and Erik Lamela and Lukaku and Deulofeu forming half of a 21st-century Fab Four on Merseyside, along with John Stones and Ross Barkley.
That these sides meet with Tottenham in the top four and Everton the bottom half indicates the way that the Londoners have made more use of their firepower. Everton have squandered too many leads Lukaku has given them. No one has won the division’s Golden Boot while plying his trade for a lower-half team since Coventry’s Dion Dublin in 1997-98 but, such is Everton’s generosity to opposition attacks that Lukaku may change that.
If their clubs’ differing fortunes suggest only one may realise his ambitions with his current employers, each should savour their scorer while they can. Kane’s prowess has prompted talk of a move to Manchester United, although his manager is adamant he is going nowhere.
“No one can buy him,” Mauricio Pochettino said this week. “He is not for sale. There is not a value because it is impossible to put a price.”
Lukaku might. He changed agents, to the controversial Mino Raiola, who claimed he would never have allowed him to join Everton and that Juventus were interested.
“I’m under no illusions that everybody would want a Romelu Lukaku,” Martinez said. Everton have a historic reluctance to sell but every Lukaku goal must add to his price tag.
Tottenham, too, can sense the financial gain whenever Kane strikes. But it is because it takes them nearer the Champions League. It is a tournament that, one way or another, both may grace in 2016.
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