Kane makes trophy vow ahead of crunch Bayern Munich vs Bayer Leverkusen clash
Harry Kane’s pledge to put team trophies ahead of personal honours at Bayern Munich is a noble virtue - but it may prove more difficult to deliver than he imagined.
The England captain needs 18 goals in the last 14 games of his maiden Bundesliga campaign to beat Robert Lewandowski’s record of 41 in a season. Kane’s 24 goals to date in the Bundesliga is the most scored by any player in his first 20 appearances in the competition.
And since his £87 million move from Tottenham six months ago, in all competitions he has supplied 28 goals and eight assists in 27 games. But although Kane may know his Bockwurst from his Bratwurst, he has not found moving to Bayern an automatic short-cut to silverware at a club who have won the Bundesliga title 11 years on the spin.
Saturday night, Bayern face a top-of-the-table date at unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen, where a win would take them to the summit - but defeat by former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso’s side would leave them five points adrift.
Kane ended his 19-year association with Spurs in search of winner’s medals and he insisted: "I've made it clear that I want to be winning team trophies, and that's one of the things that's missing from my career so far.
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"But as always I'm not going to panic - either way I'm going to keep my head down, keep doing my best for the team and hopefully that starts with a good win on Saturday." Kane, 30, has been a big hit with Bayern fans - and English football’s greatest export to the continent as an out-and-out goalscorer does what it says on the tin.
His hat-trick against Borussia Dortmund was the first treble by a player on his first appearance in German football’s fixture known as Der Klassiker, the equivalent of Real Madrid and Barcelona ’s El Clasico in Spain.
Kane could break Robert Lewandowski's Bundesliga goal record in his first season at Bayern (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)If Poland striker Lewandowski’s Bundesliga record does fall to Kane, Bayern are likely to make it a straight dozen titles. But the three-times Premier League Golden Boot winner would swap all the lederhosen in Bavaria for a league winner’s medal after 280 goals in 435 appearances for Tottenham… with no trophies to show for it.
Speaking to BBC Sport, he said: "I’m always extremely proud to have those sort of records. It’s not something I set out to do at the start but once you hear about them and once people are talking about them, it of course means you're doing something really well.
"If you'd have told me I was going to do that at the start of the year, of course I'd have taken it - so I'm really happy from that sense, but as always, we try and push and try and see how far we can get."
Kane will captain England at Euro 2024 and hopes his experiences playing in Germany will be an advantage (The FA via Getty Images)Kane will lead England into Euro 2024 on German soil this summer, hoping his familiarity with the territory will work to the Three Lions’ advantage. He said: "We’ve come so close and we’ve definitely got the bit between our teeth to try and go that one step further, but it’ hard to win those major tournaments on the international stage.
"We’re in a good place and we’ve been building nicely in previous tournaments but there’s probably more expectation this year to go far and I know the fans will be excited in the summer."
Kane was speaking to promote Children’s Mental Health Week, and he is grateful that he found the resilience to emerge from testing loan spells as a teenager before his insatiable thirst for goals burst through the surface at Tottenham.
Kane idolised David Beckham growing up ((Credit too long, see caption))He said: "I used to look up to players like David Beckham. Now I'm in that situation - there are a lot of young boys and girls looking up to me. You listen to your role models. I would have done anything Beckham said when I was a kid.
"When I was younger, being released from one club and having setbacks like that, and then when I was an older teenager, 17, 18, going out on loan, living on my own for the first time, things not going so well at some of those loans, that's when I look back.
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"I had to show a lot of strength, a lot of self-belief, a lot of resilience in those moments. I was lucky to have a good family around me and a good girlfriend at the time who's my wife now. I was able to get things off my chest and that allowed me to focus on what I needed to do, work harder and ultimately turn into the player I am now."
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