Harry Kane and Lionel Messi will command attention when Barcelona visit Tottenham Hotspur in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday. How do they measure up?
TOTTENHAM v BARCELONA BUILD-UP
• Kane is 1.88m tall – Messi stands just 1.70m – and the England striker has youth on his side too; he will be 25 years and 67 days old on the day of Spurs’ Wembley meeting with Barcelona, while Messi will be 31 years and 101 days old.
• Having scored at least once in six of his 11 games in Europe’s top club competition, Kane needs one more UEFA Champions League goal to get into double figures; it took Messi 23 games to achieve that target (though he now has a record 63 in the group stage).
• Kane was a relatively experienced player (with four loan spells under his belt) by the time he made his competition debut, aged 23 years and 48 days, in a 2-1 home loss to Monaco on 14 September 2016. Messi made his #UCL debut at Shakhtar Donetsk on 7 December 2004 aged 17 years and 166 days old.
• Messi has never faced Spurs before, but has fared well enough against English defences; 20 goals in 28 UEFA games spread across 2,334 minutes of football – an average of a goal every 116 minutes 42 seconds. That’s lower than his European average of a goal every 101 minutes and nine seconds.
• Though Messi has never played Spurs, he has seen plenty of their north London rivals Arsenal: the Blaugrana man has scored more goals against Arsenal than any other team in UEFA competition – nine over six games.
• Kane, by contrast, has yet to score in 169 minutes of football against Spanish sides – two meetings with Real Madrid in the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League.
• Messi will play only his second competitive game at Wembley, having scored there in Barcelona’s superb 3-1 final defeat of Manchester United in 2011.
• Kane is far more familiar with Wembley, scoring 22 goals in 30 appearances there for Spurs (both as their temporary home and as a ‘neutral’ cup venue) plus four in ten games for England at the national stadium. His total of 26 is the most by anyone at the new Wembley and only one off Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of 27 for club and country at the predecessor venue.
When Kane and Messi have scored their 2018 goals for club and country
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2017/18 UEFA Champions League tally
2018/19 domestic tally
All-time UEFA Champions League record (group stage to final)
All-time UEFA club competition record*
*UEFA club competition: UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, UEFA Intertoto Cup, European/South American Cup
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