Harry Kane’s Bayern Munich numbers are scary but he is still underrated – England captain is the complete centre-forward
Adam Bate reports from Cologne as Harry Kane showed the other side of his game in Bayern Munich’s 3-1 Bundesliga victory. He is the top scorer in Germany but is also the best passer of a ball around. Is the England captain still somehow underrated?
Harry Kane is deep inside his own half, under pressure and off balance. But he has seen the picture. Luis Diaz is free ahead of him. He hooks a high ball forward, spinning into his team-mates’ path. Diaz finds Lennart Karl for the finish and Cologne are beaten.
Kane did not score in Bayern’s come-from-behind 3-1 win. As such, he has fallen off the pace in his bid to break Robert Lewandowski’s single-season scoring record. The Pole once managed 41. At the halfway stage, Kane is now on a measly 20 from 17 matches.
But as the third goal in Cologne shows, there is much more to his magnificent game than goals. He was spraying passes from deep throughout. The second goal came from a corner won after a counter-attack which was sprung by him winning the ball in his own box.
Bayern legend Lothar Matthaus summed up the feeling in a recent column for Sky Sports. “A lot was expected of him, but Kane has exceeded all expectations.” He has scored twice as many goals as any other player in the Bundesliga so far this season.
He has still scored the most goals from open play, the most goals from the penalty spot and even the most goals from fast breaks. At 32 years old, he is surely football’s finisher supreme, still finding the corners with remarkable accuracy. And the numbers back that up.
The expected-goals data shows that while Morgan Rogers and Harry Wilson are on hot streaks from distance in the Premier League, it is Kane who is clear of the rest in Europe when it comes to finding the net more than he should from the shots that he is having.
