Bayern’s best ever? Kane in Ballon d’Or conversation but World Cup is pivotal

T he Bayern Munich president, Uli Hoeness, has a propensity for hyperbole, so when he labelled Harry Kane as the best transfer the club has ever made in the wake of the DFB-Pokal cup final, which Bayern won 3-0 thanks to a Kane hat-trick , you wondered whether he was simply dialling up the rhetoric. A month on, emotion subsided, it appears not. “He absolutely is the best we’ve had,” another Bayern insider confirms. It’s impossible to overstate the unfussy way Kane has won over not just Bayern Munich but, perhaps, global football opinion. Kane’s travails through Euro 2024 , when he still had yet to win a trophy, suggested a player on the downslide. Combined with the scepticism that met his Golden Boot at Russia 2018 among foreign observers – “top goalscorer despite not having scored from the quarter-finals on,” sniffed Le Journal du Dimanche – indicated that his six most productive years as a pro might have been regarded a tireless yet vain effort. When Time chose the iconic faces of the game for this World Cup , Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Kylian Mbappé, Lamine Yamal and Jude Bellingham were perhaps predictable. Yet there also stood Kane, finally having earned himself a place at football’s top table. “When we bought him for more than €100m, that was new territory for us and a crazy risk,” said Hoeness. “But he’s paid back every single euro. …