Harry Kane, who has been elevated to England’s senior squad, could find himself at the centre of a club versus country dispute this summer.
The striker, who has scored 26 goals for Tottenham in his breakthrough season, is keen to play for Gareth Southgate in the Under-21 European Championship in the Czech Republic this summer. However, Spurs are due to travel to Australia as soon as the Premier League finishes, to play a lucrative friendly against Sydney FC on 30 May. The Under-21 tournament starts in mid-June, with England’s first match against Portugal on 18 June, the first of three group games in six days.
The England manager, Roy Hodgson, who has said Southgate can pick any senior players who qualify for the Under-21s, plans to speak to Mauricio Pochettino about how best to handle the 21-year-old if he requires a rest at the end of a season in which he has become a first-team regular.
“If he needs a rest, there’s a great opportunity when the season ends before our Under-21s get-together to give him a rest,” said Hodgson. “You can’t expect me in good faith to say: ‘He should be doing the Australia trip and then resting when the Under-21s pitch up.’ I can’t go along with that. Personally speaking, playing for England at Under-21 level at a tournament is more important than a friendly in Australia.”
The England Under-21 manager, Gareth Southgate, expects to have Kane as part of his summer squad. “Everything I’ve heard Harry discuss over the last few months is that he’s been a big part of this group that want to go and have a crack at being European champions, so I don’t foresee that that will change,” he said.
Hodgson said the addition of Kane to Daniel Sturridge, Danny Welbeck, Raheem Sterling and the captain, Wayne Rooney, in the senior England squad for the European Championship qualifier against Lithuania at Wembley next week and a friendly against Italy in Turin had given him by far the best crop of strikers at his disposal since he took the job before Euro 2012.
“They are enormously better, much better,” he said. “I think we’d all agree that they’ve got talent, there’s potential there, they’ve got skill levels that we haven’t always seen. They’ve got pace we haven’t always seen.”
Aston Villa’s Fabian Delph and the Spurs full-back Kyle Walker have also been included in Hodgson’s squad. There was no place for Kane’s Tottenham team-mate Ryan Mason, while West Brom’s Saido Berahino has lost his place.
