Kane passes Shilton and asks where he stands among England's greats

Harry Kane became England's most-capped men's player on Thursday night, collecting his 126th cap in a win over Croatia at Wembley and moving one clear of Peter Shilton. Shilton's 125 appearances had stood as the benchmark for decades, and Kane now holds the top spot in both the appearances and goals columns.

Morgan Rogers opened the scoring, and Kane, who helped create the chance, sealed the result with a 64th-minute penalty. It was a composed finish of the sort that has become routine for him in an England shirt.

The comparison with Shilton is striking. Shilton needed 19 years and 224 days to reach 125 caps. Kane got there more than eight years faster, a measure of how central he has been to the national team across several managers and tournament cycles.

Where does that leave him among England's greats? On goals, the answer is at the very top. Kane is England's all-time leading scorer, having overtaken Wayne Rooney's long-standing record and moved past older names such as Gary Lineker and Bobby Charlton. Few players in the national team's history have been as consistently dangerous in front of goal.

The honest counterweight is silverware. Under Kane, England have reached two major finals, at Euro 2020 and Euro 2024, and lost both. That gap is the main reason many supporters still rank the 1966 World Cup squad, led by Bobby Moore, above him, and why debates about the all-time XI tend to pit Kane's record against the trophies won by earlier generations.

A reasonable ranking puts him in the top three or four players in England's history, behind the 1966 pair of Moore and Charlton. The argument is less about whether he belongs in that group and more about whether longevity and goals outweigh a World Cup winner's medal. Either way, the conversation has shifted, and Kane is now the benchmark that future strikers will be measured against.