They may have won 11 straight Bundesliga titles but all has not been well in Bavaria where the scrutiny is always intenseAll of a sudden none of it matters. Not a frustrating summer in the transfer market, with the lack of a sporting director often apparent. Not missing out on Declan Rice. Not even the uncertainty over the goalkeeping position. Harry Kane’s impending arrival at the Allianz Arena is a moment of triumph for Bayern Munich, and they are right to celebrate it.How badly Bayern have needed this, on so many levels. Not necessarily on a statistical one – the team scored 92 Bundesliga goals last season, compared with 97 in 2021-22, a negligible difference in light of the exit...
For all the bruises along the way Tottenham’s season is still very much alive on three fronts with the Kane-Son synergy crucialDon’t mess with the formula. With 71 minutes gone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the first 45 of them a haze of empty content and trapped energy, Harry Kane bumped Angelo Ogbonna away with his back to the West Ham goal, flexing his glutes, aware of the beeping, flashing light on his internal radar. Behind him Son Heung-min had already begun to sprint.Son knew, even before that surge of static had begun to crackle around the stands. We have seen this picture before. The pass from Kane was instant, fizzed with a kind of celebratory excitement. Son flexed his...
The England captain, who passed Jimmy Greaves’ Spurs record, has shown his ability time and again despite a lack of honoursThis was Harry’s game, Harry’s day. And also, in an agreeable piece of irony – football really does love this stuff – Arsenal’s day, although we can perhaps draw a veil over that for now.At the final whistle of this 1-0 defeat of Manchester City the Tottenham players stayed out, trophy ceremony style, for an on-field moment with Harry Kane as he celebrated passing Jimmy Greaves’ all-time club scoring record. Continue reading...
Captain’s miss will haunt him but the reality is France were winning this game before they even started winning itFor a while, in those endless, scrolling micro-moments of gape, shock, acceptance and slowly gathering grief, the ball didn’t look like it was actually going to come down. There was always something weird about its angle, something anti-gravitational.The night was suddenly quiet, the ball a lovely white thing out there all alone in all that space. Maybe it could just stay there. Maybe this thing could just stretch out and not actually happen, or not happen enough to matter. Continue reading...
Spurs sat back in the north London derby, then applied their shoulder to the wheel to bump and press Mikel Arteta’s sideTwo minutes into the second half of this north London derby, Harry Kane took the ball inside the Arsenal penalty area and entered into a chest-bumping grapple with Gabriel. Kane stalled a little, struggling to keep his feet. Then he did something that seemed to capture the physics, the newtons of this match in a single collision. Kane pushed and found no resistance, no pressure in front of him.Gabriel fell backwards, swished aside like a pair of rickety saloon bar doors. The ball was nudged back to Son Heung-min, who smashed it past Aaron Ramsdale to make the score...