Wayne Rooney vs Harry Kane: Who was better?

England have been truly blessed with world-class strikers over the years. If you had to pick the two most complete forwards to don a Three Lions shirt, you’d go with Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane.

From one record-scorer to the next, Rooney and Kane have been by far and away England’s two best forwards in the 21st century.

There has been minor debate for some time over who is better out of the two, but Rooney himself decided to step aside during a recent appearance on The Overlap with former teammate Gary Neville.

“I think Harry Kane is an incredible player. The goals he’s scored, the assists and as of the last few years, I would say he’s England’s greatest ever player,” Rooney said, much to Neville’s astonishment.

Is Rooney correct, though? Is he perhaps a little too modest? Let’s take a look at their careers…

Oh boy, it’s everyone’s favourite Countdown tradition – the numbers round.

Obviously, the totals could look skewed given Kane’s career isn’t over and he could easily score another, say, 6000 goals before his career is over. You know, give or take.

But we’ll deal with goals-per-game stats once we’re done with totalities. For now, we’re going to count every senior goal scored by Rooney and Kane at club and international level. Club friendlies are excluded, but international friendlies permitted. Youth international games do not count. You keeping up with all this so far?

Let’s crunch those numbers.

Rooney ended his career with 366 professional goals. Kane is still going at 404.

Even when adjusted to goals-per-game, Kane’s ratio of 0.63 trumps Rooney’s 0.41.

The clear winner here is Kane.

Hey, this is a Euro 2024 article after all. And, well, there are a few reasons why Kane walks this comparison with ease.

For starters (and finishers, for most), Kane snatched Rooney’s accolade as England’s all-time leading scorer last year and hasn’t looked back.

If you want to delve deeper, the 30-year-old has also captained England through an actual ‘Golden Generation’ as opposed to the letdowns of Rooney’s day. The Three Lions are enduring the best spell in their history since winning the 1966 World Cup, and Kane has been at the forefront of that relative success.

Ooh baby, the first contentious category.

Kane is known nowadays as perhaps the…