“It’s very stressful,” said Harry Kane, though he had scarcely looked stressed as he gave a masterclass. It is too late to sway the electorate anyway. The votes have been cast and either Kane will become England’s first Ballon d’Or winner for 25 years and Bayern Munich’s first for 45, or the serial scorer who was in his thirties before one of his teams won a trophy will find the most prestigious individual award elusive as well.
But if part of the case for Kane was apparent in his performance against Arsenal, part of it comes from his consistency and character. On a night when Bayern began without Michael Olise, due to suspension, and Luis Diaz, courtesy of managerial choice, Kane was the outstanding player in Europe’s marquee match.
The man who denied him, and Bayern, victory may be biased but knows who he thinks should get the main prize at Monday’s ceremony. "He is the clear winner,” said Declan Rice, the England vice-captain and the scorer of Arsenal’s equaliser. “His numbers speak for themselves. The year he has had has been remarkable. When you play with him you realise how good he is and when you play against him you see how much of a pain it is. He is ridiculous, such a good player and I am lucky I can play with him, not so lucky I have to play against him."
The Kane clan must hope Rice is right. “I think my wife would prefer to know and my family, it’s very stressful for everyone,” said the striker. No one has tipped him the wink. “I can see why they don’t tell people. They want everyone to go, all the big names there and there will be more people watching it if they don’t know so I can understand why. From my point of view, of course I’d love to know to just see and not have to wait throughout the whole night. But it is their decision, I can’t control that. We’ll have to just enjoy it and try not to stress out too much.”
Lamine Yamal seems to represent Kane’s major competition, and has certainly been campaigning for the award. The Englishman can feel the everyman who does exceptional things, who has propelled himself into the ranks of the world’s best without behaving like a superstar. So this can become Kane’s new normal, trying – seemingly very successfully – not to be distracted by the Ballon d’Or.
“It is hard not to,” he added. “There are always rumours and stuff flying around so you try to stay away from it.” Kane’s career is, among other things, an example of how to keep calm under pressure. He demonstrated it when converting his penalty to put Bayern ahead. It meant he has scored in 10 consecutive Champions League games and if the criticism, dating back to his Tottenham career, is that he has scored in too few finals, there are plenty of major matches among those 10: home and away against Real Madrid, home and away against Paris Saint-Germain, against last year’s finalists Arsenal.
And yet his goal was not his defining contribution. That came earlier. Mikel Arteta sounded lyrical as he said Kane played a pass “into a space that doesn’t exist” for Alphonso Davies to score. “One of my best passes, for sure,” said a typically measured Kane. “I said to Phonzy [Davies] before the game, playing in that position whenever I get the ball just run because I feel I can find him with his speed and his pace.” Davies is searingly quick and it was a reminder that one of the ways to get the best from Kane is to use quick runners either side of him.
Kane is set to extend his contract with Bayern until 2029 and while there are few indications that more than three years at the Allianz Arena have made him fluent in German, he certainly seems to understand one word: wanderlust.
He is Bayern’s centre-forward and yet there are times when it appears they have none. He breaks goalscoring records even when he seems to spend some of his time trying to emulate Andrea Pirlo, an ageing regista spreading passes with elegant ease and running the game with cool authority. Perhaps the astonishing element is not that he scored 61 goals for Bayern last season; he did so while also trying to play in the centre of midfield for swathes of games.
Arsenal struggled to track him, but they are far from alone in that. An extraordinary performance from Kane was, in some respects, also an ordinary one from him. And so to Monday, to see if the player who was loaned to Leyton Orient and Leicester, Millwall and Norwich, will have a Ballon d’Or. “It would be amazing to win,” said Kane. He just might.
