I took on Harry Kane to see how I’d stack up against a professional footballer – I beat England star in key test

WE HAVE all wondered how we’d stack up against a professional footballer, so I put myself against the best. After the best season of his life, Harry Kane is putting up numbers that we have only ever seen produced by the greatest to ever play the beautiful game – Lionel Messi. Kane hit a top speed of 32.1 KM/H during the World Cup Credit: Getty A pace that I had to try and beat Credit: Lloyd Canfield So, to really compare myself against him, I’d need some physical numbers to shoot for, and some serious improvement on my finishing skills which would never match his… Thankfully, with my StatSports vest on, which Kane himself uses to check out his numbers with best-in-the-game tracking and tech, I had all the numbers I needed, and the right equipment to track my progress. Sign up for the Football newsletter Thank you! CHALLENGE ONE: SPRINT SPEED Now, obviously, Kane is a professional athlete. I, on the other hand, play 5-a-side once a week, often skip leg day, and ate fast food almost every day while I was at the World Cup watching him hammer home the goals. So to start off, I chose a test I thought I had a chance of beating him at – sprint speed. During the World Cup, StatSports measured Harry Kane‘s top speed as 32.1kph, and they set me up with a 40m sprint to see how close I could get to that. My first two attempts clocked in slower than him, at 31.1kph and then 30.2kph, before I finally pulled it together and got the better of him with my third sprint, at 32.3kph – I was buzzing with that. BEST FREE BETS AND BETTING SIGN UP OFFERS I embodied my inner Lightning McQueen for my last attempt Credit: Lloyd Canfield And finally got one over on the England captain Credit: Lloyd Canfield CANFIELD 1-0 KANE Most read in Sport CHALLENGE TWO: JUMPING Something Kane is certainly better than me at though, is scoring headers. A key part of which, is your ability to leap in the air, which is not one of my strengths. A professional like the England number nine would be looking to measure up at around 40cm in my next test, a standing vertical jump, with the top five percent of Prem stars clocking in at over 48cm. Up I stepped, all 5’7 of me, to jump a whopping 31cm – nine centimeters short of my target. Kane had levelled the scoring, just like he did against DR Congo. CANFIELD 1-1 KANE Kane had me easily beaten in the air Credit: AFP or licensors CHALLENGE THREE: STAMINA My stamina has occasionally left a little to be desired. But after plenty of pavement miles in the last season or so, thanks to running every time Chelsea lost last season, and then in the altitude of Mexico City, which saw me labelled ‘pathetic’ by Piers Morgan and John Terry, I feel fairly fit at the moment. To measure my stamina, the StatSports team had me run one kilometre as quickly as I could – running back and forth on a football pitch. They reliably informed me that Kane would be aiming for a time of under three-and-a-half minutes, so that was my benchmark. Off I went, with former professional footballer Sam Wardrop guiding me on my timings, who told me after my first length “you need to pick up the pace, way too f****** slow.” That I did. I was briefly on track to match him when my legs started giving up on me, and I was falling behind – still pushing my limits but unable to keep up with Bayern’s best. The final sprint back to the line felt as though I had chains around my ankles with planets attached to them, as I clocked in at just under four minutes. Still, I was pretty pleased that I could do 1km in under four minutes, but disappointed I had been beaten. So he had won, but I WILL be working on my dribbling and finishing to one day be better than him at those… FINAL SCORE: CANFIELD 1-2 KANE Comment now