By Ben McFadyean.
Founded in 1900, Bayern Munich won its first title in 1932 — a 2-0 win over Eintracht Frankfurt at the Städtisches Stadion, the home of the then Rekordmeister and 5-time champions 1. FC Nürnberg.
Meanwhile, it took just two seasons for the Reds to win their first Meisterschaft of the Bundesliga era, following the club’s promotion in 1964/65, which represented a full thirty-two-year gap between league titles.
For the captain of England, this weekend’s confirmation of Bayern’s win in the 62nd Bundesliga season represents the climax of a 14-year professional career since first signing his professional contract as a 17-year-old in 2010.
The Champions League of 2018/19 with Spurs, two European Championship finals, and a third-place finish in the UEFA Nations League in 2019 have failed to deliver the ultimate prize of a trophy.
Despite more individual accolades than most, including three Premier League Golden Boot awards, the same at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and the 23/24 Torjägerkanone in the German top tier, the cannon-shaped trophy for the top scorer.
FC Bayern has many experienced title-winners in its historical ranks. The most successful is Thomas Müller. He has now won the 13th Meisterschaft of his career, the Champions League twice, the DFB Cup six times, and became world champion with Germany.
The list of the side’s title winners is impressive; with 12 titles with Munich, Thomas Mueller with 13 championships is top followed by 11, including the DFB Pokal 2011 with Schalke 04 for Manuel Neuer.
Even Jamal Musiala has 5 German championship wins to his name, and at just twenty-one. With 105 England appearances at the age of 31, Kane was one of the few footballers in the FCB squad celebrating his first title seems incredible. But as of Sunday, Kane’s title drought has officially been lifted.
Kane has been playing professional football for almost 15 years now. For much of his career, he has been labeled world-class. The center-forward’s determination to score goals, the elegance with which he deploys his teammates, and the way in which he applies himself across the pitch make the Walthamstow-born player one of the best footballers of this era.
For a long time, England’s consistently best player’s lack of titles was blamed on his affiliation. Tottenham Hotspur, the club to which Kane had remained loyal for over a decade, is just as notoriously unsuccessful as the England team. To reach the zenith of their game, you have to go back to the 1960s for the last time, almost a lifetime.
By Bundesliga standards, the €110m Thomas Tuchel spent to bring Kane to Bayern remains, over the 2020 transfer of Luca Hernandez by a margin of €20m, an amount that buys most German top-tier clubs a key player.
By comparison, the most Borussia Dortmund has ever paid for a player is the Ousmane Dembele from Stade Rennes, a €35m transfer in 2017, which netted the notoriously transfer-shrewd Westfalian club over €100m from Barcelona himself.
Replacing the 238-goal striker Robert Lewandowski would always be a massive and costly undertaking. When the striker took the plunge to join FC Bayern at the start of season 23/24, for some in the English press, the move to the ‘Farmer’s league’, as the German league is sometimes scorned, was a downward move.
For the striker, who followed in the footsteps of British players at the club like Scotland’s Alan McInally and Welshman Mark Hughes, it would always be the path to guaranteed top honours.
The inconsistency of this season, which is also former Burnley manager Vincent Kompany’s first at the Bavarian club, has at times been painful to watch, especially the quarterfinal exit in the Champions League to Inter, but also the inconsistent league form.
After being pushed to the brink in the 4-3 home win against league newcomers Holstein Kiel, in which Kane scored a brace, he commented to Kicker: “There are a lot of people who only talk about the fact that I haven’t won a title in my career. It would be nice to shut a few people up,” Well, now he has silenced his critics.
So what does the future hold? Fellow England and former Tottenham colleague defender Eric Dier announced this week that he will be: “leaving Bayern at the end of the season,” with 5-time Ligue 1 champions AS Monaco as the unconfirmed destination. Will Kane follow?
There has been a stream of stories in the English media linking Kane, who was still living in Munich’s Kempinski Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in February, to clubs in the Premier League and even Saudi Arabian clubs, including Al Hilal, this winter.
Following the last 16 Pokal exit to Leverkusen in December, and with BVB’s Serhou Guirassy snapping at the heels just five goals behind the Englishman in the top scorer list, the Bundesliga title may remain the only domestic silverware for Kane this season, very disappointing for a club as spoilt for honours as the 32-time champions and 6-time Champions League winners.
However, all eyes will now be on the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup, which kicks off across the United States on June 15th and climaxes with the final in Dallas on July 13th.
In spite of many bookmakers having Bayern down as ‘only’ third most likely winners, behind Manchester City and Real Madrid, Harry Kane can be instrumental in bringing the cup, which has record prize money of €1bn, back to Southern Germany.
As for Harry Kane, he will be remembered as one of England’s greatest strikers. If he can be persuaded to commit to the German club long-term, the 24/25 title may well be the beginning of a whole series of trophies.
The Krumbach-born England manager, for one, will be counting on his goals at the next World Cup, which once more will take the world’s best to the United States, along with Mexico and Canada, in the summer of 2026.
Success at either tournament would put the notion of a ‘curse’ to rest once and for all.
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