Harry Kane’s Bayern Munich debut ends in Supercup defeat
When Harry Kane finally left Tottenham, 4369 days had passed since his debut, every one of them without a trophy. The expectation was that he would break that cycle on day one at Bayern Munich. Instead, schadenfreude visited the €100m signing.
Dani Olmo’s hat-trick stunned the expectant Bayern supporters inside the Allianz Arena as RB Leipzig won the Supercup – and there was nothing that Kane could do to prevent it. Two down when he came on. Three down before he had touched the ball.
When Bayern had talked of making him feel at home, this is not what Kane would have had in mind. He chased around but with little reward. Thomas Tuchel even apologised to his new signing afterwards for his team-mates’ inability to find him with their passes.
Perhaps this defeat was for the best. There were those keen to question the value of any silverware won in a side that has made such a habit of acquiring it without him. On this evidence, it will be no foregone conclusion. He must make the difference, after all.
Two chances came and went inside 25 minutes for 18-year-old Mathys Tel, filling in for Kane up front. The teenager’s very presence appeared designed to remind everyone of the hole that required filling – a visible example of why Bayern so prioritised this signing.
When Tel went through for a third time just before the hour mark, seeing his shot saved, the chants for Kane that had begun earlier in the half grew louder. The crowd, many of whom had queued for his shirt since it became available that morning, ached for his arrival.
Seeing the stadium heave with anticipation as Kane received the call to end his warm-up and race to the bench for instructions, it was impossible not to think of the pressure that comes with becoming the record signing in the history of one of the world’s biggest clubs.
Kane is accustomed to carrying the weight of a club’s expectations, of course. But at Spurs he was one of their own – loved long before those expectations were placed on his shoulders. At 30, there are one hundred million reasons why he must deliver here.
Asked by Sky Sports about the unique pressure that comes with being Bayern’s No 9, Mario Gomez, a man who scored 113 times in the role, is adamant that dealing with that is not as psychologically straightforward as those who have never had to do it might believe.
“People who are not strikers, who are looking from the outside at this team, they always say, ‘Yeah, I could also score goals in this team.’ Maybe in some games,” Gomez explained.
“We had games where it felt like a training game because obviously many teams are coming here and they gave up already before the game started, especially in the Allianz Arena. So maybe these games, yes, millions of strikers could have scored in these games.
“But there also different games. There are games where there is a lot of pressure because this club always has to be very successful.
“Everybody always expects a striker of Bayern Munich to score. If you score once it is not enough, you have to score another, if not a hat-trick. If you do not score in an important game they say he is a good player but not a top player. It is a different kind of pressure.
“If you are a smaller club and you want to reach the top level, that is a different kind of pressure. At this club, as you can see in the last years, if they are going out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals it is like somebody destroyed the club.” SkySport
