Harry Kane is England's poster boy, the only truly global star in the World Cup squad, but the Tottenham striker has had to work ferociously hard to convince the doubters throughout his career.

Born five miles from White Hart Lane, Tottenham did not have to look far for a hero the Spurs fans label "one of their own" but the route to the first team was a circuitous one.

Spurs' north London rivals Arsenal opted against sticking with Kane when he was a youngster, deeming him not strong or quick enough

Fast forward to 2018 and Kane, 24, will carry the expectations of a nation on his shoulders, spearheading England's World Cup ambitions in Russia on the back of 147 goals in the past four seasons for club and country.

"You could tell straight away even though he was young, he could strike a ball really well," David Bricknell, a Tottenham scout, told AFP.

Bricknell coached Kane as a six-year-old at Ridgeway Rovers, the same youth club where a young David Beckham excelled.

"I've been doing it for over 20 years and there's probably only a couple that stood out like that," added Bricknell.

However, it was a different set of skills from Kane in the box that first caught Bricknell's eye.

"We were doing a shooting exercise and I said 'does anyone play in goal?' and he put his hand up," he recalled.

"He was making some unbelievable saves, to the right, to the left, punching the ball over the top, everything. I thought 'fantastic, I've got a goalkeeper'."

Only when one of Kane's parents intervened was he freed up to score goals.

"We had him for two seasons. He scored lots of goals for us," said Bricknell. "Arsenal picked him up very early. His mobility was why he struggled there apparently."

Watford was Kane's next destination, on a six-week trial, but it was a hat-trick against his beloved Spurs that convinced Tottenham to take him on.

Unlike some of the household names headed to Russia, Kane does not fit the mould of a supremely talented prodigy destined for stardom.

"It was certainly touch and go when he was about 14 whether he'd even be kept on," Tottenham's former head of player development Chris Ramsey told FourFourTwo magazine.

"He struggled with his pace a lot in the early days. He always had talent but he was a little kid and traditionally smaller players have struggled to make the breakthrough."

However, what Kane never lacked was an self-belief and determination to make it to the top.

"Harry was always someone who was going to get better just by the sheer volume of work he was willing to do, and by the mentality he would demonstrate on a daily basis to invest in himself," Tottenham's former academy director Alex Inglethorpe, who now heads up Liverpool's academy, told the Telegraph newspaper.

"He had a fantastic desire to improve and would always want to do extra work at the end of a session.

"He became obsessive about his finishing in all its various forms and would dedicate a huge amount of time to improve these aspects of his game."

Even when farmed out on four separate loan spells to the lower leagues at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester as a teenager, Kane did not stand out.

Yet, inspired by the story of Tom Brady, who went from being picked 199th in the NFL draft to a five-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Kane prioritised his physical conditioning to become a worldwide name.

"Tom Brady believed in himself an awful lot and had a vision of what he wanted to do and went and achieved it, probably becoming the greatest player of all time. That's obviously what I want to go and achieve," Kane told FourFourTwo.

Even after Kane's breakthrough season in 2014-15 there were many doubters who labelled him a "one-season wonder" but he has now scored more than 30 goals for club and country in four consecutive campaigns.

Like many of his predecessors in the role of England's saviour, the one thing lacking from Kane's brilliant early career is a starring role at a major international tournament.

He flopped at Euro 2016 as England exited in embarrassing fashion to Iceland.

Kane's career, though, is a lesson in taking second chances. England's hopes depend on him sticking with that script in Russia.