Wigan Athletic old-boy backing Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo to show quality at the Euros

So says former Wigan Athletic first-team coach Anthony Barry, who spent the last season working with Kane at Bayern Munich, where he scored an astonishing 36 goals during his maiden campaign in Germany.

"Harry is just a joy from a coaching point of view," enthused Barry. "He is high performance, low maintenance, totally reliable...he's everything you could wish for in a player from a coach's point of view.

"As a person, he is simply an amazing guy...and as a player, I have known a professional who has such a high level of self-awareness.

"Harry knows exactly what Harry needs...how he wants to be trained, when he wants to be trained, what the opponent will do, which leads him into what he needs to do to get past that.

"I've never seen like it with all the other elite-level players I've worked with, and for sure England have a massive chance this summer.

"They have an amazing squad who have been together for many years, they have their own way of playing, they've come so close a few times...and so many players who have taken a step up in their careers at club level.

"As a team, they will be wanting and expecting to take that next step and, with Harry as captain, they will be led in the absolutely correct way."

Not that Liverpudlian Barry will be cheering on England, with him being part of Roberto Martinez' backroom staff with Portugal.

Cristiano Ronaldo is another established striker who's found the going tough so far.

But Barry – speaking on the ‘Essential Euros Football Podcast’, says the 39-year-old is far from finished at the highest level.

"Cris is about two years older than me, but he looks about seven years younger than me!" he laughed. "There's two ways to go about coaching someone like that.

"Firstly, Cristiano is always challenging himself, he's never satisfied...there's not enough players like him in the game, and it's exactly why he's had the career he has.

"Secondly, for me, there's always the next challenge ahead in sport, and I'll go into the Euros with the challenge to win it.

"The challenge is to get Cristiano at the level he needs to be, and my challenge is to give him the platform to be able to play his best football for five weeks.

"Cristiano is obviously a unique player and a unique guy...a global superstar and an icon outside the game. It's a privilege to be involved with his journey, and to coach him, and one that never gets lost on me.

"He has this amazing ability to be able to walk out onto the pitch and become that little boy again who has the excitement and enjoyment of just playing football...his whole demeanour changes when he goes out onto that pitch.

"It's an incredible quality to be able to have and, added to that incredible level of discipline and dedication and sacrifice, it's what makes him one of the best if not the greatest player of all time."