Curse of Kane strikes again for poor Harry
WAIT FOR TROPHY GOES ON
IT is the curse of Harry Kane – no matter how brilliantly he does, the striker still seems destined to never win a trophy.
He must be one of the unluckiest players around to enjoy his most prolific season in his first campaign with the trophy-winning machine that is Bayern Munich and still finish empty-handed.
Kane might have suspected all was not well when he lost the German Super Cup 3-0 to RB Leipzig on his Bayern debut last August.
The club were then dumped out of the German Cup, the DFB-Pokal, by third-tier Saarbrucken when Kane was an unused substitute.
Bayer Leverkusen ended Bayern’s 11-year monopoly of the Bundesliga to win their first German title and now they have exited the Champions League in the cruellest of fashions.
Kane, below, must have been dreaming of a Wembley final when he came off after 85 minutes with a back injury, according to head coach Thomas Tuchel, and Bayern winning 1-0.
But within six minutes Joselu, who flopped at
Stoke and Newcastle, had scored twice to win the tie for Real Madrid.
For Kane, who turns 31 in July, it was the latest in a string of near misses.
He twice tasted defeat in League Cup finals with Tottenham, in 2015 against Chelsea and Manchester City six years later, and then there was also the 2019 Champions League final defeat against Liverpool. Those runners-up medals were all he won with Spurs, despite becoming the club’s all-time top scorer on 280 goals ahead of Jimmy Greaves.
The curse remained with England as Kane lost the Euro 2020 final on penalties to Italy at Wembley, a game the Three Lions should have won. Having scored a record 62 goals for England, Kane deserves more. He appeared certain to win his first trophy when he joined Bayern last summer but this will be their first season without silverware since 2012. Kane’s curse should not detract from his achievements, though. Alan Shearer, the Premier League’s greatest striker, won a solitary league title in 1995.
Gary Lineker’s only major trophy in England was the 1991 FA Cup with Tottenham, although he did lift the Spanish Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup with Barcelona. Sir Stanley Matthews, arguably England’s finest player, won that one FA Cup in 1953. Sir Tom Finney, who can also lay claim to that mantle, did not win a major honour in his career. No one thinks any less of these great talents because of their trophy hauls and the same applies to Kane.
He is Spurs and England’s greatest goalscorer and his position in the pantheon of legends is secure.