Bayern Munich clinched their 33rd Bundesliga title on Sunday, and in doing so ended Harry Kane‘s long wait for the first major trophy of his senior career.
Kane, 31, could have earned his first winner’s medal on Saturday had Bayern won at RB Leipzig in the striker’s absence; he watched on from the stands as he served a suspension for picking up his fifth yellow card of the season the week before. But a 94th-minute equalizer from Leipzig’s Yussuf Poulsen kept the champagne on ice.
Bayern’s title win was eventually confirmed on Sunday when second-place Bayer Leverkusen fell to a 2-2 draw at Freiburg, meaning they could no longer mathematically better Bayern’s 76-point total with two matches remaining.
Leverkusen’s draw ends Kane’s run of playing 694 matches for club and country without having a single trophy to show for his efforts.
Kane posted a trophy emoji on a black background on his Instagram stories minutes after Bayern’s title win was confirmed.
The perennial German champions relinquished their stranglehold on the competition last season when Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen lifted the Meisterschale and Bayern failed to win a piece of silverware for the first time in a decade. But Vincent Kompany’s side have been frontrunners for much of this campaign.
Kane’s failure to collect a trophy during his storied career had delighted rival fans and fostered talk of a trophy “curse.”
He had repeatedly come within touching distance of ending his drought. Kane has lost a Champions League final and two Carabao Cup finals with Tottenham Hotspur, two European Championship finals with England and a German Super Cup final on his Bayern debut last season.
The England captain joined Bayern from boyhood club Spurs in 2023 and is on track to become the first player to end his first two Bundesliga seasons as the competition’s top scorer.
Kane, who two weeks ago broke a league record with his 60th goal in his first 60 league games for Bayern, netted 36 times in his debut season and has 24 goals with two matches remaining this term.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest strikers of his generation, England’s all-time top scorer and second on the all-time Premier League scorers’ list, Kane had won a hatful of individual awards.
His move to six-time European champions Bayern was all about finally adding trophies to his goal-scoring records and fulfilling his title-winning ambitions.
Information from Reuters contributed to this report
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