It is often said there are no certainties in football; that is to reckon without Harry Kane.
Last weekend against Wolfsburg, when Kane gathered a short pass from Luis Díaz before dancing across the edge of the area and curling home for Bayern Munich’s sixth goal in an 8-1 rout, the England captain became the first player to score 20 or more Bundesliga goals for three straight seasons since Friedhelm Konietzka in the mid-1960s.
It marked the latest record-breaking chapter in an odyssey that has exceeded even the wildest expectations since the 32-year-old completed an £86m move from Tottenham in the summer of 2023.
Kane’s goalscoring record was exceptional even before he left England. With 280 goals in 435 appearances, he is not only Tottenham’s all-time top scorer but also the second most lethal marksman in Premier League history, with his 213 top-flight goals eclipsed only by Alan Shearer’s 260.
Harry Kane: is the Bundesliga scoring record beckoning?
At Bayern, however, Kane has moved into a different stratosphere. In the Premier League, he had a goals-per-game ratio of 0.64; in the Bundesliga, where his strike against Wolfsburg brought his overall tally to 82 goals in 80 games, the figure is 1.02. Never mind a goal a game: before Bayern’s midweek visit to Köln, Kane was scoring a goal an hour.
Kane’s failure to score in that 3-1 victory was significant. Had he marked his 17th league appearance of the season with a 21st goal, the England international would have been on course to beat Robert Lewandowski’s Bundesliga record for most goals scored in a single season, established in 2020-21 when the Pole netted 41 times in 29 games for Bayern.
As it is, Kane’s goals per game ratio this season of 1.18 lags just behind that of his Polish predecessor’s 1.41.
Harry Kane: ‘a special player’
Still, for a player who has already scored hat-tricks against RB Leipzig, Hoffenheim and Stuttgart this season, there is plenty of time to recover lost ground. And the omens are undeniably good. No player in Bundesliga history has reached 100 goal contributions more quickly than Kane; no player across the top five European leagues has scored more goals than the Englishman since he joined Bayern. As Bayern head coach Vincent Kompany remarked last month: “He’ll keep having a lot of individual records because he’s a special player.”
If there is a secret, it is perhaps that where others see obstacles, Kane sees opportunities.
“I always feel I can use the defender to bend [the ball] around him,” the striker said after his effort against Wolfsburg. “This one came off perfectly, and it couldn’t have been more top corner.”
And Kane could not be more top drawer.
