Fox Sports, who hold the exclusive English-language broadcast rights to the World Cup in the USA, released their list of the top 100 players at the tournament recently. It had Lamine Yamal in first spot, Kylian Mbappe second, Harry Kane third, Ousmane Dembele fourth and Michael Olise fifth.

My top three would be different. I’d have Vitinha in it, without question. And Pedri. But for the first time perhaps in 60 years, England can claim to have the best player in the world going into this World Cup in Mexico, the USA and Canada. As the opening game awaits on Thursday in Mexico City, Kane is top of the pile.

That is not to deny the talent of Yamal. He is a beautiful player to watch. But he tore a hamstring playing for Barcelona at the end of April and has not played since. Spain will probably claim he is fully fit but the reality is that he won’t be. Anyone who loves football will hope that he still lights up the tournament but he won’t be quite the same.

England have been in that position many times. Too many of our tournaments have been blighted by desperate attempts to get key players back from injury, be that Kevin Keegan in 1982, David Beckham in 2002 or Wayne Rooney in 2006. Too often, those players have been consumed by frustration at their inability to play to their maximum.

Mbappe’s a genius who has already played in two World Cup finals in his career and scored a hat-trick in one of them. But he has endured a difficult season at Real Madrid and even if he, too, goes on to excel in the tournament, he has slipped below Kane in the table of the top players on the planet this year.

Kane is untouchable at the moment. At Bayern Munich, he has matured into the complete centre forward. He scored 61 goals in 51 appearances for the German champions last season. In his three seasons in Bavaria, he has scored a remarkable 146 goals in 147 games. His hold-up play is superb, his passing is pinpoint and his reading of the game is an education.

His scoring for England is equally relentless. When he directed a glancing header into the New Zealand net for the winner in Saturday's friendly in Tampa, it was his 79th goal in 113 appearances for his country. He is heading towards becoming the first player to score a century of strikes for England.

He is so far ahead of the rest that it feels almost unnatural. Rooney is next on 53 goals. To put his mark in more perspective, the closest active player to his record is Raheem Sterling on 20 goals. Marcus Rashford is next on 18. If Kane keeps scoring at his current rate, it is possible he will finish his career on double the number of England goals of his nearest challenger.

He is a phenomenon by any standards. He also looks sharp coming into this tournament, which has not always been the case. Like a lot of Premier League players, Kane has sometimes looked weary at the start of major competitions. This time, helped by a gentler schedule in the Bundesliga, he looks raring to go.

Something of an inverted snobbery tends to work against Kane in England. When he is acclaimed as the greatest player in the world, it is met with accusations of hyperbole. When the same praise was lavished on Robert Lewandowski, say, it was met with an acknowledgment that recognition of his sublime talents was overdue.

Lewandowski never won the Ballon d’Or, although he should have done. Kane has never won it, either. If he and England have a good tournament, that might change. It should change. No one has had a better year than him so far and if England go close in North America, it will count heavily in the voting.

An English footballer has not won the award for a quarter of a century. Michael Owen was the last, in 2001, and Kane is in the kind of prolific form that should earn him a shot at that prize. After the dominance of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, there have been four different winners of the award in the last four years. Kane may make it five.

I hope he does, for many reasons. I am bored of him being underrated. It never quite feels with Kane that we appreciate what we have got in him. Maybe it is because he does not seek the limelight away from the pitch. Maybe it is because of the insulting, simplistic portrayal of him, and other players, in Dear England.

Dear England is typical of the grossly patronising attitude towards English footballers. It is typical of the way they are lampooned and caricatured as little more than oafs. It is typical of the jealousy directed towards them. It is part of the reason why people like Kane do not get the plaudits that are their due.

This World Cup could change that. If Kane, and Jude Bellingham, stay fit, England will be in with a chance of winning this tournament. There are maybe five other teams who are also in that bracket but Kane is good enough to be able to make the difference between England and the rest.

My first taste of Mexican hospitality 

A funny thing happened to me in Mexico City on Sunday afternoon. I had been standing in a winding, Disney-style queue outside the FIFA accreditation centre at the Azteca Stadium for an hour or so. 

The queue was well-managed and good humoured and cloud cover meant the heat was not fierce. I grew a little bored and leaned forward, resting my elbows on a railing. Soon after that, a local volunteer appeared and asked to see my passport. 

He asked my date of birth, as well. I thought maybe there was a problem with my accreditation. He ushered me to the front of the queue. It slowly dawned on me that he had seen my grey hair, had seen me leaning on the railing and thought I was about to keel over. 

‘It is because you are one of the more “experienced” people here,’ another volunteer said, explaining my special treatment and grinning broadly. I couldn’t argue with that. 

This will be my eighth World Cup and there is no part of it I am looking forward to more than watching a match at the Azteca for the first time when Mexico play the tournament’s opening game against South Africa on Thursday. 

To watch a game at the stadium where Brazil scored the greatest goal of all time in 1970 and where Maradona won his World Cup in 1986 will be a privilege. 

And my queue experience was the best introduction to Mexican hospitality and kindness I could ever have wished for.