Emile Heskey will not say there is daylight between them, only which way he leans. And he leans toward the Englishman he played with.
In an Eldorado podcast appearance picked up by Bavarian Football Works, the former England forward chose Michael Owen’s peak over Harry Kane’s. Just.
Heskey put the choice down to how the two strikers unsettle a defense.
“With Kane, I don’t think anyone thinks, ‘God, I’m up against Kane and he’s going to do this to me, do that to me.’ They’re thinking he is going to score a goal today, and I’m going to try and figure out how to stop him doing that, and you might not be able to stop him, because he only needs a fraction of a second to get a shot off and get that goal,” he told Eldorado.
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Heskey, who built a celebrated front-two with Owen at Anfield, argued that Owen’s prime took defenders apart in ways Kane rarely does. Owen, on his reading, would drag a defender in, go at him and bend the match. Kane works the other way around. The finishing is so complete that the fear is binary, a goal or no goal, not a series of invisible losses in open play.
The Ballon d’Or verdict goes the other way
The twist is that Heskey does not apply the same logic to the trophy.
Owen won the Ballon d’Or in December 2001, in the middle of a treble season for Liverpool that took in the UEFA Cup, the FA Cup and the League Cup. Kane won his on October 26, 2026 in London, UEFA confirmed, finishing ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal after a 73-goal season for club and country.
To Heskey, that late timing is the point. He argued that winning the award in a player’s thirties, as Kane has, is a more remarkable feat than winning it in the early twenties, as Owen did, precisely because of the career arc it demands.
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Kane’s Bayern form keeps feeding the case
If the prime-for-prime verdict favors Owen, Kane’s current season keeps the argument running. Bayern Munich won 2-1 at Mainz on November 7, with Kane setting up both goals, taking him to eight assists after nine matchdays. That is a new Bundesliga record at that stage of a season.
The striker did not score at Mainz. His scoreless run stretches back to Bayern’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal on October 16, which coincides with his move into a provider role at the top of the table.
Kane’s 2026 Ballon d’Or made him the first Englishman to lift the award since Owen in 2001.
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