Tuchel: No Replacement for Harry Kane in Sight

Thomas Tuchel has stopped looking for a direct replacement for Harry Kane. England's captain scored again in the 2-0 win over Czechia in Prague on Tuesday, his 87th international goal, and the head coach made clear he no longer expects to find a like-for-like successor.

"You will not get another Harry Kane, first of all,"

Kane, 33, needs just 13 goals to reach a century for England and two caps to draw level with Peter Shilton's record of 125 appearances. "He is closing in. He scored again. Thirteen left. That's 13 matches," Tuchel said. Instead of chasing a copy, Tuchel has started looking at alternatives further forward, and England finished the Czechia match with Jude Bellingham playing as a centre-forward after coming on for Kane.

"I like him as a No 9," Tuchel said of Bellingham, adding that the Real Madrid midfielder can "contribute to both sides and overloads the sides" without disrupting the team's balance. Tuchel said England had found him a role as a central No 10 in the previous match that allows him to drift both ways, more in keeping with a 4-2-3-1 than a rigid centre-forward slot. Asked whether Bellingham was now first in line to take over up front, Tuchel set the experiment against a wider list of options still being tested.

"We look for different solutions. We finished the game with Jude as a No 9. There will be someone else but it will not be Harry or a copy of Harry."

The options behind Kane remain thin. Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney, now with Al-Ahli Saudi after a January move and 22 goals for the Saudi club since, were both left out of this camp. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who replaced Kane during the defeat by Spain on Saturday, is 29 with four goals in 13 caps, while Nottingham Forest's Liam Delap, 23, has yet to win a senior call-up. Spain beat Croatia 4-1 in the same round of Nations League fixtures, a Lamine Yamal double either side of a Marc Pubill Pagès goal putting them 7 points clear at the top after three matches, level with England on points.

Kane's record continues a run Tuchel saw up close as Bayern Munich manager when the club signed him from Tottenham in 2023, a deal club great Uli Hoeness has called Bayern's best signing. Tuchel pointed to Kane's work in training as much as his finishing, saying the captain sets the tone for the rest of the squad by being first out for running sessions.

If Bellingham continues to be used as an auxiliary No 9 rather than Kane being replaced outright, it points to Tuchel managing a gradual transition in attack rather than naming a single successor, with Kane's own timeline — by his estimate, another decade at the top — shaping how urgent that search really is.