Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or is the ultimate accolade for a player whose trophy cabinet doesn’t in any way reflect the sheer quality of his game or the consistency of his performances.
The Bayern Munich striker (33) is the first Englishman to win football’s most prestigious individual award since Michael Owen in 2001.
Kane’s numbers are absolutely mind boggling and the England captain seems to be getting better with age. 73 goals for club and country last season.
In September he became the quickest player to reach 100 Bundesliga goals (achieved on his 98th appearance for Bayern).
He is also Spurs’ all time top scorer (280), England’s all time top scorer (91) and the highest scoring Englishman in the Champions League (58).
But all his personal successes in club and international football have been confined to the German domestic titles since he arrived at Bayern in 2023.
He was also on the losing side for Spurs in the 2019 Champions League final against Liverpool and was part of two England sides that lost the European Championship final.
Kane’s lethal finishing is by no means the only thing in his repertoire.
Honed an instinct he first picked up as a youth team player, Kane has also developed into a very good playmaker.
I think I’ve always had the passing range, the vision, the football brain (the game understanding) actually throughout my whole career. I think that’s just developed over the last couple of years, over the last few years in particular since I’ve been here at Bayern.
– Ageing like fine wine –
The clean_cut Kane, married to his childhood sweetheart Katie Goodland, is a real throwback in this age of football bling.
It hasn’t always been plain sailing for a player who had a difficult time making an impact at Spurs in the early stages of his career and was consequently loaned out to a number of other clubs.
There were almost two years between Kane’s first Spurs goal (vs Shamrock Rovers in 2011) and his next (vs Hull in 2013).
Even after that breakthrough season in 2014/15 he was still labelled a ‘one season wonder’ and that has proven to be utterly and completely wrong.
Bayern boss Vincent Kompany has spoken highly of Kane’s qualities – his distribution, his work rate and his ‘game intelligence’.
“To combine that side of his game with the numbers he has you have to do the job to help the team move on and then still get into the box so it’s not an easy thing,” Kompany said.
That’s something we’ve seen and have enjoyed, may have been slightly underrated in England at the time, but he’s ageing like a very good wine so I’m just relishing in seeing that facet of his game for us as well.
Bayern team mate Jonathan Tah was also very complimentary of Kane’s work rate having seen it first hand.
“I played against him quite a bit and he was always getting better. Now that I’m playing with him I can see why.”
“He’s never satisfied. You see him working before and after training. He’s the greatest finisher I’ve seen in my life and he’s still working on it.”
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