World soccer's great runner-up is finally about to lift a trophy.
Harry Kane is on the verge of winning the German league title with Bayern Munich and he could seal the deal on Saturday.
After a career filled with individual top scorer awards and a host of runner-up medals — the Champions League, two European Championships, two English League Cups — it will be the first major trophy of Kane's career.
A player who's often talked of putting the team above himself will finally get his reward.
“If it’s me scoring a couple of goals, I’ll take that for sure, but if it’s someone else, I’m not going to worry too much,” Kane said this month. "All those kinds of individual achievements are what you think about after it’s done.”
Bayern has an eight-point lead over second-place Leverkusen with four games to play. The title could be confirmed Saturday if Bayern beats Mainz and Bayer Leverkusen doesn't beat Hoffenheim.
“No one deserves it more than him,” Bayern's honorary president Uli Hoeness told broadcaster Sky on Wednesday.
Why hasn’t Kane won a trophy before?
There's been bad luck along the way and Kane's trophy drought has sometimes brought mockery from opposition fans.
At Tottenham, it often seemed like Kane and Son Heung-min were working wonders with a team which couldn't match rivals' budgets. Tottenham has been in sharp decline since its all-time top scorer left.
There have been tough days, especially when Kane was limited by an ankle injury in Tottenham's 2-0 loss to Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League final, or England's penalty shootout loss to Italy at his home European Championship two years later.
Kane could have won a trophy hours after signing for Bayern for a fee of potentially over 100 million pounds ($110 million at the time), but the team lost the German Super Cup on his debut. Months later, his club lost the league title to Leverkusen in a major upset.
Things have improved this season under new coach Vincent Kompany but Bayern was knocked out of the German Cup by Leverkusen in December and eliminated from the Champions League by Inter Milan last week.
Why does Bayern suit him so well?
When Kane moved to Germany in 2023, it was a shock. He'd been at Tottenham since he was 11 and once seemed set to spend his entire career there.
Kane is captain of the England national team, whose players typically tend to stay in the Premier League. He's also a big cricket fan, and was leaving that sport's birthplace for a country where few have ever heard of it.
Kane settled in well after initial delays moving his family to Bavaria — his fourth child was born a week after he signed with Bayern — and has been taking German lessons.
He fits Bayern well, too. Just like club great Robert Lewandowski, who left for Barcelona in 2022, Kane provides the center-forward focus which provides the structure for other players like Jamal Musiala and Michael Olise to operate around.
Kane's putting up impressive scoring numbers. He scored his 60th Bundesliga goal in his 60th game last week, reaching that mark faster than anyone before him.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
James Ellingworth, The Associated Press
