He’s the all-time record goalscorer for England and Tottenham and the second-highest Premier League scorer in history.
Yet for all his goals and individual accolades, and his undeniable status as one of the greatest No.9s of the 21st century, Harry Kane just can’t win a major trophy.
The infamous ‘curse’ – once called the Tottenham curse, for the club he grew up just 15 minutes down the road from and would become a talismanic captain – now appears to have followed him to Germany.
This morning, Kane’s Bayern Munich was dumped out of the Champions League semi-finals in dramatic fashion after a 2-1 second-leg defeat to Real Madrid saw them bow out 4-3 on aggregate.
Madrid had been the better team for most of the match, yet Kane teed up Canadian star Alphonso Davies to score the opener in the 68th minute with a screamer off his weaker foot.
But Munich coach Thomas Tuchel then substituted a host of stars – including Kane – to try and defend the lead.
Instead, it slipped through their fingers, with Kane watching from the bench as Madrid struck twice in the closing stages to book their place in the final at Wembley Stadium against another German team in Borussia Dortmund.
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Crazy comeback sees Real Madrid prevail! | 01:39
It was Kane’s 634th game for club and country. But in all that time, he is yet to win a major trophy.
Football fans often talk about a god of football. Perhaps Kane made a deal with football’s devil – to become one of the most celebrated scorers of his era, yet never to win.
Though he now resides in Munich, having made a MONEY move in the off-season, the endless taunts of opposition fans that have dogged the illustrious striker throughout his career must hit even closer to home.
In 435 appearances for Tottenham, Kane scored 280 times – putting him beyond even the great Jimmy Greaves as Spurs’ all-time top scorer. His record included 213 strikes in the Premier League, second only to Alan Shearer’s 260.
He claimed the Premier League golden boot in three separate seasons, yet the side that Ange Postecoglou now oversees is still chasing a first major trophy since the 2008 league cup.
Only once in the Kane era did they finish in the top-two in the Premier League – back in 2016/17, when Kane scored 29 times including a stunning four hat-tricks. Spurs finished with 86 goals, their most in a league campaign since 1962-63.
Even that wasn’t enough: Chelsea still won by seven points.
Face shove denies Real Madrid goal | 00:44
There have been other near-misses for Kane in his time at Tottenham.
The most painful, perhaps, is the 2018/19 Champions League final, when Spurs lost 2-0 to Liverpool.
There was also a 2015 League Cup final (lost 2-0 to Chelsea), another loss in the same competition in 2021 (1-0 to Manchester City).
Only a couple of months after that defeat, Kane suffered the greatest near-miss of his career: when England lost a penalty shootout to Italy in the final of the (delayed) 2020 Euros – once again on the famed turf of Wembley.
Harry Kane played every single minute for Spurs and England in each of the above finals. He captained the Three Lions in the latter tournament and scored in the shootout, just as he captained them in the 2018 World Cup and won the golden boot as they reached the semi-finals.
After all these heartbreaks, after his long years of service to his hometown team, things were supposed to be different this season.
Bayern had won the German Bundesliga 11 seasons in a row – and won five of the last 11 DFB Pokal (German Cup) tournaments in that time too. They also won the Champions League, the Club World Cup, and the UEFA Super Cup in both 2013 and 2020 – and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League semi-finals four other times in the period between those two titles.
The German team, put simply, were serial winners: juggernauts in the way that Tottenham can only aspire to be these days.
Kane has scored 36 goals (and four hat-tricks) with eight assists already in 32 league games this season, a record season for a newcomer to the Bundesliga that will all-but-assure him of winning another golden boot.
He added eight goals and four assists in 12 Champions League games – a record for an English player in terms of goal involvements in a CL campaign.
And yet Bayern have lost the Bundesliga title, currently sitting 15 points behind Bayern Leverkusen with two games to play. Even second place isn’t assured, with VfB Stuttgart looming just two points behind them.
Bayern were also dumped out of the German Cup – the DFB Pokal – in just the second round by third-tier Saarbrücken. They also lost the German Super Cup (played between the reigning league and cup winners) 3-0 to RB Leipzig, with Kane playing less than half an hour off the bench.
The Champions League was their last hope.
And when Kane played a delightful pass for Alphonso Davies to score a sublime goal in the 68th minute, it seemed that a finals date with their German rivals Borussia Dortmund – and a return to Wembley for Kane – was within reach.
But it all fell apart as the nigh-inevitable Madrid juggernaut fought back, scoring twice through an unlikely source in Joselu, a 34-year-old loanee from second-division Espanyol.
Kane, meanwhile, was substituted in a move that left commentators floored, given he is Munich’s penalty taker and a shootout was possible. Kane is also an asset in closing out games given his ability to hold up the ball and waste time, and to defend corners and crosses. His replacement was a straight swap for Eric-Maxim Chuopo-Moting – a striker who had scored just three times in 920 minutes across all competitions this season.
It wasn’t the only controversial substitution. Star attackers Jamal Musiala and Leroy Sane had both been taken off already by Thomas Tuchel, with Bayern going into a defensive shell that soon backfired.
But Tuchel after the game revealed that Kane’s substitution was forced, saying “He couldn’t keep going. He played with back pain and he couldn’t keep going, his back froze up.”
Perhaps the curse had found a new way to strike down Kane’s hopes, as the England superstar was left to watch from the sidelines as his Champions League dream faded away again.
It means that this season, for the first time in 12 years, Bayern will not win a trophy.
Harry Kane left England to win trophies, joining a club that has racked up silverware with ease – and somehow came up empty despite a maiden individual campaign for the ages.
Kane has never scored or assisted in a final, outside of his penalty shootout goal in the Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy.
And he has struggled to make an impact in many other crucial games, while key errors have also played a part in his failure to secure a single major trophy.
In the 2018 World Cup semi-final against Croatia, and with England leading 1-0, Kane opted to shoot instead of passing to a wide-open Raheem Sterling. His shot was saved and Kane’s follow-up hit the woodwork from just a metre or so out. England would collapse late in the match before losing in extra-time.
Four years later, he had the chance to make amends in the World Cup quarter-finals in Qatar. This time it was against France. Kane scored a penalty, before having another attempt from the 12-yard dot late in the game with England a goal down. But Kane blazed it off the top of the bar, and the Three Lions were dumped out by the reigning champions.
That’s not to say that Kane is to blame for his failure to win a trophy for club and country – tactics and teammates have let him down time and again. But in just over a month, Kane will captain England at the Euros in Germany – and it could be the perfect opportunity to finally end his trophy curse.
The world’s fourth-ranked side enter the tournament as favourites, with Kane second-favourite to take the golden boot behind France’s Kylian Mbappe. His scoring form is set to prove crucial to the Three Lions’ hopes, and if he performs in big games, he could just prove the doubters wrong.
Having moved to Germany to win trophies and seen that turn into a disastrous 12-year low for Bayern Munich, it would be fitting for Kane to guide England to glory on the soil of his new home.
If he does so, he would not only end his own personal curse, but the one that has doomed his national team to repeated failures in their long wait for a first major trophy since the 1966 World Cup.