KANE: I’M IN A NEW BATTLE TO WIN TROPHIES
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 £87million move from Tottenham six months ago, in all competitions he has supplied 28 goals and eight assists in 27 games.
But Kane (above) has not found moving to Bayern an automatic shortcut to silverware at a club who have won the Bundesliga title 11 years on the spin.
Tomorrow night, Bayern face a top-of-the-table date at unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen, where a win would take them to the summit – but defeat to former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso’s (below) side would leave them five points adrift.
Kane 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.
“But I’m not going to panic – I’m going to keep my head down, keep doing my best and hopefully that starts with a good win on Saturday.”
Kane, 30, has been a big hit with Bayern fans – his hat-trick against Borussia Dortmund was the first treble by a player on his first appearance in Der Klassiker.
If Lewandowski’s Bundesliga record does fall, Bayern are likely to make it a straight 12 titles.
But the three-time 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… but no trophies.
Speaking to BBC Sport, he said: ”I’m always extremely proud to have those sorts of records. It’s not something I set out to do at the start, but once you hear about them and people are talking about them, it 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 to try and see how far we can get.”
Kane, who will lead England into Euro 2024 on German soil this summer, added: “We’ve come so close and we’ve got the bit between our teeth to try and go that one step further, but it’s 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.”