Harry Kane didn’t play against Saarbrücken on Wednesday, but it didn’t stop him becoming the butt of the joke. As his Bayern Munich side went down 2-1 in the second round of the DFB Cup against their unfancied third-tier opponents, Kane remained on the bench, watching another trophy slipping out of his grasp. His first game at Bayern had ended in defeat in the Supercup. Meanwhile, the Spurs team he left in the summer are top of the league. Sometimes, the random scrawl of footballing fate can read suspiciously like poetry.
Still, one of the advantages of playing for Bayern is that salvation is always close at hand. In a way the defeat in midweek, with Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting flailing away up front, proved exactly why Kane was signed: the touch of class, the cutting edge, the point of difference. This season has already produced 14 goals in 13 games, two hat-tricks, and an outlandish lob from his own half against Darmstadt last weekend. Yet to a large extent all this feels like mere preamble to his first big test on Saturday evening. In the words of Sebastian Kehl, the Borussia Dortmund sporting director: “It’s that time again.”
