Opinion
Bundesliga record transfer
A storm sweeps through the league: Harry Kane could be the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the Bayern squad
A boy from north London: Harry Kane is adored in Tottenham, after 19 years he leaves the club for Munich.
© John Walton / DPA
Harry Kane is the first player for a Bundesliga club to pay more than 100 million euros. He is a win for FC Bayern Munich and the league – and yet reveals a problem.
Good things come to those who wait: After weeks, actually months of tugging, Bayern have a new star striker. Harry Kane signs for four years at Säbener Straße and it’s a win-win-win situation: for Bayern, the player and also the league.
The past season showed how important a central striker has become in football. Rarely has the German series champion been seen as vulnerable as in the season after Torgarant Robert Lewandowski left. Ex-coach Julian Nagelsmann did without an at least halfway equivalent replacement, Sadio Mané, who left after just one season, was never the type of player who could have replaced Lewandowski. The result: Bayern had problems scoring goals – and said goodbye to the cup and Champions League early on. They only celebrated the eleventh championship title in a row because Borussia Dortmund made a mistake on the last day of the game.
A look at the squads of the top teams shows that the days of false nines in professional football are over. Barcelona with Lewandowski, Manchester City with Erling Haaland, Paris Saint-Germain with Kylian Mbappé or SSC Napoli with Victor Osimhen – all reigning champions of the major European leagues have at least one star striker in their squad. Just don’t stop Bayern – until now.
Harry Kane: Bayern get one of the top scorers in England
With Harry Kane comes a striker who has not only proven his quality in the past season. The 30-year-old has scored 213 goals for Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League alone, only Alan Shearer has scored more in the English professional league. And that at a club that always played for the international places, but never for the big titles. “The truth is Harry Kane trumped the club several years ago. Only Harry’s loyalty and the love of the fans kept him at Tottenham,” wrote Guardian journalist and Hotspur fan John Crace in his farewell comment. Last season, Kane proved that at the age of 30 he is definitely not old-fashioned. With 30 goals, Kane finished second in the top scorer list behind Erling Haaland (36 goals). And that in a season in which Manchester City dominated the league and Tottenham missed out on international places in eighth place.
For Kane himself, the dream of trophies could come true with the move to Munich. More than a runner-up in 2017 and the lost final of the Champions League in 2019 are not in the goalscorer’s CV. Kane’s desire to change is also due to the fact that winning the title in England with Tottenham is hopeless – a change within the league would not have brought Kane, who has played for Tottenham since he was eleven, not over the heart. Especially since the striker will be undisputed in Munich. Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting (34), who was injured in preparation, and talent Mathys Tel (18) will only remain on the bench behind Kane. Kane, that’s to be expected, will also take on a leadership role at Bayern and improve the team. Expect nothing less from England’s captain and record goalscorer. Kane is the missing piece of the puzzle in the squad of the German series champion for a season.
The league also benefits from the change, albeit only to a limited extent. In recent years, the Bundesliga has increasingly become a training market for the large and financially strong clubs from England and Spain and will in all likelihood remain so. Erling Haaland, Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham, Dominik Szoboszlai and Christopher Nkunku – they all left the league after just a few years and followed the lure of money and gave their clubs high transfer fees. The fact that the 100 million hurdle for a move to the Bundesliga has now fallen for the first time shows that at least one club also has the financial means to keep up with the big names abroad. The international football world will now be paying more attention to the Bundesliga again, because in Kane the league once again has the superstar it urgently needs.
Imbalance in the Bundesliga
But this is also the core problem of the league, because apart from FC Bayern Munich, only a few clubs in the Bundesliga have the opportunity to pay transfer fees into these spheres. Together, Munich (150 million euros) and RB Leipzig (156 million euros) invested 306 million euros in new players this summer. This corresponds to more than half of the total transfer fee for newcomers (592 million euros) in the Bundesliga. If you add Dortmund (49 million) and Leverkusen 852.5 million), the big four in the league paid more than two-thirds of the transfer fee. The fact that Leipzig was able to invest so much also has to do with the transfer proceeds of 240 million euros, so the Saxons are still posting a plus. The expenses are also distributed among six newcomers who are still at the beginning of their careers. Bayern, on the other hand, can cope with a deficit of around 50 million euros – albeit with a stomach ache.
100 million euros for a player with only one year left on his contract is certainly unusual – especially since Kane no longer has the status of a viable talent. However, the pressure to succeed after an almost completely botched season in Munich is so high that Kane should be the panacea for which Munich is willing to invest a lot. It is to be hoped that Kane does not suffer the same fate as Sadio Mané and that Bayern, for the second time in a row, will bring a bad purchase worth millions to the Isar instead of a solution to the storm problem.