Harry Kane scored twice against DR Congo in the World Cup knockout stage and it wasn’t just about saving England from an embarrassing early exit. It pushed his season goal total to 72. That’s three more than Cristiano Ronaldo ever managed in a single campaign.
Ronaldo’s peak was 2011-12 with Real Madrid, when he bagged 69 goals across all competitions. That included 46 in La Liga, 10 in the Champions League, four in domestic cups and three for Portugal. It was the year Madrid hit 100 points and pried the title away from Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. But Kane’s 2025-26 season has already blown past that number with potentially four more World Cup matches still to play.
For Bayern Munich, Kane was absolutely relentless. He scored 36 goals in 31 Bundesliga games. In the Champions League he put up 14 in 13 matches. The DFB Pokal? Ten goals in six appearances. He even got one in the DFL Supercup. That’s 61 goals for his club alone, which is insane when you think about it.
With England, he scored in a pre-tournament friendly and then opened the World Cup with two against Croatia. England played Ghana to a scoreless draw, but Kane got on the board again against Panama. The two against DR Congo brought his international tally for the season to 11.
So where does that leave him? Behind only one name in the entire post-2000 era.
Lionel Messi’s 2011-12 campaign is the gold standard nobody expected to see challenged. Messi scored 50 goals in 37 La Liga games — double what Ronaldo Nazario managed for Real Madrid in 2003-04. He added 14 in the Champions League, nine in other competitions and 10 for Argentina. Final total: 82 goals.
Kane would need 11 goals in England’s remaining World Cup games to catch Messi. That’s a lot, obviously. But four matches is four matches and we’ve seen Kane go on tears before. He scored five in a single Champions League knockout tie last season.
The odds are against him. History says Messi’s record is safe. But nobody had Kane passing Ronaldo either, and here we are.
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