Mere hours after Harry Kane knew he would be ending another club season without a trophy, Bayern Munich made him and the rest of the squad attend a banquet. It wasn’t what most would have chosen to do after the bitter Champions League semi-final elimination to Real Madrid, but it is a custom for the German club.
It wasn’t the only new thing Kane had to endure. Although he has obviously experienced trophy disappointment on many occasions, it has never been when success was so expected. Kane had made the hard choice to leave Tottenham Hotspur for Bayern, only to suddenly find success wasn’t coming easy for the perennial German champions. It did hit him. The striker still registered this most painful of seasons – as he put it himself – in the way he always does. He internalised it and persevered. It was why the banquet suited him more than most. It helped him “get on with it”, in the way he always does.
This has been Kane’s admirably persistent attitude to every major disappointment of his career: the 2015-16 battle at Stamford Bridge, the 2018 World Cup miss against Croatia, the 2019 Champions League final, Euro 2020 heartbreak and that penalty miss against France in Qatar.
It is why Euro 2024 carries more resonance for Kane than any England player, for reasons beyond the simple fact he is the only member of the squad to have featured in every Gareth Southgate tournament bar Kyle Walker and John Stones. The Manchester City duo have won plenty in their careers, while Kane has instead been branded a “loser”, to go with all manner of other dismissals of him. That is some of this tournament’s wider significance.
This story is from the June 13, 2024 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the June 13, 2024 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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