Cape Town - Tottenham
striker Harry Kane says he is looking forward to facing Giorgio
Chiellini in Tuesday's Champions League clash with Juventus in Turin.
Kane made his first start for England in a 1-1 draw with Italy in 2015, where he faced the 33-year-old for the first time, and is again ready to take on Chiellini and a Juventus defence, who are yet to concede in seven matches in 2018.
"Chiellini is an amazing defender," Kane said. "Five minutes into my first start for England he made a very tough challenge. It was a nice welcome to international football!"
He added: "Juve are a fantastic team but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I always say that I want to test myself against the best defences in the world and this is certainly one of those.
"Not many people expected us to get through from the group stage but we won the group instead, so we must be confident against Juventus."
The respect is mutual, which was evident when Chiellini was asked about the Premier League’s top scorer, who has 23 goals from 26 appearances after scoring 29 in 30 last season.
"He's an exceptional striker, his statistics of the last year demonstrate this," Chiellini said. "He's a player that's grown a lot, the most difficult thing is to keep improving.
"He's a player that's very complete, scores, plays for the whole team, has the characteristics and skills that make him one of the strongest in the world. Tottenham are lucky to have a player like him, it's not so common.
"Actually stopping him one to one just me alone I think is pretty impossible, I'm not so presumptuous or arrogant, my goal is the whole of Juventus stops him.
"It's true one-to-one clashes are important, but the whole team will have to do its best to limit not only Harry Kane but other players that play with him. They have this fab four in attacking areas [Kane, Dele Alli, Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen], we shouldn't think of Tottenham as just Kane."
Kick-off is at 21:45 (SA time).