Harry Kane is resolutely Bayern – a mature and ultra professional athlete dedicated to his craft. So why would he want to leave? Asks MATT BARLOW
Conversations among the Bayern Munich supporters leaving Celtic Park made it clear Die Roten did not have confidence tanks replenished to capacity.
Vincent Kompany they were inclined to like. He seems to have the sort of aloof authority they can associate with and yet his team, they agreed, was a work in progress.
Michael Olise has added class, but they are not the red machine of old. And not simply because meddling with traditional colours had left them unable to wear their home kit in the Champions League with UEFA ruling the names and numbers on the back of the shirts were not visible enough.
Most doubts revolved around strength at the back where goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is nearly 39, and vulnerabilities away from home in the Champions League reflected in the inability to kill off the Celtic tie in Glasgow.
Faith has been shaken by that rare empty-handed season, and yet up front Harry Kane continues rattling in goals at a rate fit to extend the lineage running from Gerd Muller to Robert Lewandowski.
Like them, Kane hauls goals in great numbers, caring less than ever about the aesthetics. He finds space and if his team-mates find him, he will usually make work for the goalkeeper with either foot or his head.
It was recently revealed that Harry Kane has a release clause in his Bayern Munich contract
Kane has scored 29 goals in 30 appearances for Bayern Munich so far this season as he continues to thrive
Despite a trophy-less first season Kane has rattled in the goals like Bayern icon Gerd Muller (right)
His goal at Celtic was number 29 for this season and after a goalless draw with champions Bayer Leverkusen in front of new England boss Thomas Tuchel on Saturday, his Bayern total stands at 73 in 75 appearances.
There have been assists, too, including wonderful sweeping passes from deep, releasing the high-speed wide attackers in the way Tottenham supporters will fondly recall him linking up with Son Heung-min.
Mostly though it’s about the goals. Pure goals. Clusters of them against those teams Bayern like to crush. Taps-in celebrated with the same zeal as anything more elaborate.
Penalties and plenty of them despatched with remarkable focus. He has not missed from the spot in 29 attempts since England’s World Cup quarter- final against France, now more than two years ago.
To anyone learning their football in the immediate aftermath of their hat-trick of European titles in the Seventies, a team featuring Sepp Maier, Franz Beckenbauer and Muller, this is very much what Bayern’s aura was about. They epitomised German efficiency in an era when we were all in awe of it, and Kane enhances the same identity.
He is resolutely Bayern, a mature and ultra professional athlete dedicated to his craft and a bearer of responsibility.
His mentality has always been a comfortable fit for the club. It is just his unfamiliarity with major trophies that spoils it. And why can’t that change? Why can’t 2025 be Kane’s year?
Eight points clear at the top of the Bundesliga after holding Leverkusen at bay, with a Champions League final in Munich and a Club World Cup in the summer, which does not hold the same burn-out fears in Germany with an 18-team top flight, one domestic cup competition and a winter break.
Thomas Tuchel will be keeping a keen eye on his England captain’s progress at his former club
The striker has maintained his goal scoring form with Bayern but is yet to win a trophy
Bring home a couple of those trophies and we could be talking about him and the Ballon d’Or next autumn. I mean, it’s an irrelevant trinket if you’re asking me but why shouldn’t he win it?
Unfashionable? Not young and swish? Too old? But they love the oldies at the Ballon d’Or.
It isn’t the transfer market. Lewandowski came second in the 2021 vote behind Lionel Messi. In 2020, after leading Bayern to a Treble he had been the favourite when the award was cancelled because of the Covid pandemic.
This was the Lewandowski of his early 30s, the age of Kane now. Without the zip of youth but thriving as a master craftsman at the vanguard of a dominant team with pace fizzing around him.
Accusations that the England captain does not produce in big games might resurface after the Leverkusen draw. Bayern were outplayed and fortunate not to lose and Kane hardly had a sniff.
That is not on him. Create chances for him and he will score. Kompany’s Bayern are not the finished article but are evolving. Chances will come, goals will follow, and they will compete for trophies. They always do.
Unless there is an undisclosed personal reason it is difficult to imagine why he would want to turn his back on Munich and all these opportunities and return to the Premier League.
To put his body through the rigours of English football with no guarantee of challenging for the titles he will on a regular basis at Bayern, who are not wallowing about in the bottom half like Tottenham and Manchester United, even if Bayern are not quite what they were.
Bayern under Vincent Kompany are not the finished article but are still evolving under his reign
Kane should be more interested in trophies than hunting down Alan Shearer’s record
Just to hunt down Alan Shearer’s Premier League goals record. Really? When there are real trophies to be won?
Five things learned this week
1. Strong Paul Warhurst vibes already from Mikel Merino, Arsenal’s emergency centre forward who scored twice at Leicester.
Warhurst was a centre half at Sheffield Wednesday summoned to solve a crisis in 1992-93.
He started up front with a goal at Nottingham Forest, two against Spora Luxembourg in the UEFA Cup and went on to score 12 in 12 games.
He ended the season with 18, helped the Owls to two cup finals and was called up by England as a striker, by which time he didn’t want to play in defence any more.
2. Experience is most useful during difficult times and Chelsea, who operate a football team on the side of their international player trading operation, are finding this out having hastily disposed of all of theirs because it doesn’t hold value.
Suddenly, they look a little like what they are: a collection of extremely gifted young footballers in need of examples to follow and learn from on the job.
Chelsea seem to be a collection of talented young stars in need of a senior example to look to
3. Ego-free Luton Town looked well set to ride out relegation. Nobody there thought they were too good for the Championship, and I was sure they would find their feet despite a difficult start.
That they have not stresses the importance of momentum. For 10 years they were an upward force until one season in the Premier League sent them spinning back the other way. They have lost 43 of the last 70 league games and won only 13.
4. In a week when 16-year-olds Michael Noonan of Shamrock Rovers and Jorthy Mokio of Ajax scored in Europe, 45-year-old Kevin Ellison was on target with a 98th-minute equaliser for promotion-chasing Vauxhall Motors in the Northern Premier League West.
5. Fear not because semi-automated offsides in seven of the eight ties are coming to rescue the FA Cup.
