England captain Harry Kane became his country's leading goalscorer last week, surpassing Wayne Rooney in the process, but Bristol Rovers manager Joey Barton believes his fellow Evertonian retains the status as the better player at their respective peaks.
Kane scored from the penalty spot against Italy in Naples on Thursday as the Three Lions beat the Azzurri away from home for the first time since 1961, and the Tottenham Hotspur star followed that with an instinctive finish in a 2-0 win over Ukraine at Wembley on Sunday as Gareth Southgate's side made a strong start to their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign.
Those goals took Kane's tally to 55 in an England shirt, two clear of his predecessor as captain, Wayne Rooney. Naturally, the changing of the guard atop the scoring chart has stoked some debate about the two players, and Barton – who represented England against Spain in 2007, weighed in on social media.
"People comparing Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane?" Barton tweeted. "WR in a completely different stratosphere. Levels and levels and levels above."
Barton's tweet was accompanied with a screenshot of another user's post, which played down Kane's record by highlighting some of the sides he scored the majority of goals against including San Marino, Panama, Andorra... and Scotland.
Barton added: "Respect what Harry Kane has done but let’s settle down on the goal record. Michael Owen, Alan Shearer, Gary Lineker, all light-years ahead as marksmen. Then Rooney (is) just a well better player. The last world-class Englishmen. (Jude) Bellingham has a chance to be world-class of current mob."
Rooney (who found the target twice against Scotland and five in matches with San Marino) made 120 appearances for his country, scoring 53 times. His best moments in an England shirt were probably at Euro 2004, when the then-Everton phenom burst onto the international stage with glittering performances before being cruelly forced off in the quarter-finals with a broken foot.
From that moment, his performances in tournaments were underwhelming by the huge standards he set himself in a Manchester United shirt in the Premier League, although he was admittedly hampered by injuries in the lead-up to both the 2006 and 2010 World Cups. His career ended with just one World Cup goal, scoring the equaliser against Uruguay in the 2014 group stage before Luis Suarez's late winner that effectively eliminated Roy Hodgson's side.
Kane, however, has been more productive in tournament football. He failed to produce at Euro 2016, but he starred in England's runs to the 2018 World Cup semi-final and the Euro 2020 final, winning the golden boot in the former. The 29-year-old scored twice in the 2020 World Cup in Qatar in December, but he missed the decisive penalty as England were eliminated in a hard-fought quarter-final against France.
Ultimately, comparing two very different strikers is a difficult task. Very few players ever to lace a pair of boots had comparable peaks to Rooney, but Kane's longevity as one of the best strikers in the world for several seasons, delivering 12 major tournament goals in the process, makes it an intriguing conversation.
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