Harry Kane is partially crediting his improved nutrition for his current form.

“It clicked in my head a football career goes so quickly, so you have to make every day count,” said Kane.

“But you can’t train as hard as you’d like when you have so many games to play, so you have to make the little gains elsewhere. So, over the last year or so, I’ve made them on the nutrition side. I was recommended a chef and, when I spoke to him, it blew me away a bit. When he explained what the body does and how he could help me recover … it opened my eyes. I’d always eaten well, never badly, but he explained what you could do. It’s not always about just eating the right food, but eating it at the right times.

“You can eat healthily all week and then stock up on carbs before a game, but your body might not be used to that and could actually go into a kind of shock. So it’s about making plans around training, maybe stocking up on carbs sometimes, and going lower at other times. I started doing that on 1 January, a new year’s resolution. We had a baby on the way, we knew she would take up a lot of our time, but I was cooking, my missus was cooking, and the food was getting boring …”

“He’s absolutely the kind of role model you want,” said Gareth Southgate of his striker. “Clearly our sport has changed massively over the last few years in terms of preparation. But you’re talking about a player trying to maximise his ability and finding every edge he can. The marginal gains make a massive difference at this high level. Far more of a difference than at a lower standard of football. You want a mindset in a player where he wants to become one of the best in the world because, for me, that’s a mindset that will inspire others. The more people like that in my squad … well, it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy with everyone always striving for more. They’re not at the level they want to be at yet, so everyone’s hungry for more.”