Harry Kane now has just two players above him in the all-time Premier League goal-scoring chart, and each offers a different signpost at the fork in the road his career has reached.

After netting his 200th goal in English football’s top flight this month, Kane has only Wayne Rooney (208) and Alan Shearer (260) to chase down in his pursuit of another prestigious record. Shearer chose to join and power his hometown club (Newcastle United) after winning one league title at Blackburn Rovers, while Rooney left his (Everton) to win trophies at Manchester United. Which road might Kane take? He’s already Tottenham Hotspur’s all-time top scorer, and the England record will be his the next time he finds the net in an international fixture, too, but are these records enough to satisfy him?

It was Shearer who turned down the chance to move to Man United in 1996, then the dominant force in England, in favour of joining Newcastle. Ultimately, he chose to prioritise his longstanding affinity with one club over the near-certain guarantee of silverware with another.

“There is not one minute of any day I look back at my career and say I wish had gone to Manchester United because I would have won medals,” Shearer said earlier this month. It’s probably what someone with a stunning scoring record, but one solitary league winner’s medal, would say.

It remains borderline inexplicable that a player as relentlessly efficient in front of goal as Shearer won the Premier League on only one occasion, with Blackburn in 1995. Shearer stood in the Gallowgate End at St James’ Park as a youngster and felt the lure of “achieving my dream” of playing for Newcastle too great to resist.

“Harry has the Tottenham record and will have a statue, will get the England record and probably a statue at Wembley, and there’s a good chance the Premier League record,” Shearer continued. “They are his medals. He is the only one who can answer it, if he can say, ‘I’m the happiest guy alive, I have all the records, I might not have a trophy, but I’m happy.'”

The jury is still out on how Kane feels now. But it is ominous for Tottenham that he tried to force an exit in 2021, believing Spurs were ill-equipped to satisfy his desire to win silverware having won nothing to that point, despite establishing himself as one of the finest strikers of his generation.