At last, Harry Kane has got the monkey off his back. No longer is he football's greatest player to never win a trophy. Bayern Munich have wrestled back the Bundesliga title, and their £85 millon English striker led the charge.
Kane's entire career has been about redemption, about proving doubters wrong and making critics eat their words. As detailed in his very emotional piece for The Players' Tribune in 2018, he has been fuelled by rejection from an early age, starting from his release by Arsenal aged eight. "Looking back on it now, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because it gave me a drive that wasn’t there before," he proclaimed of this setback.
The many, many goals Kane has scored down the years have silenced a lot of those naysayers, though without the team silverware to show for his efforts, there would always be more of them. Now, he is free from the shackles of those jibes. His most staunch haters will claim the Bundesliga is a one-team league, but against a Bayer Leverkusen side who went last season unbeaten domestically and having appointed the manager of relegated Burnley, this was far from a cakewalk for Bayern. It doesn't matter either way. These are nuances for the fickle.
Kane's career has a new chapter, and it won't stop at one title. He can now chase down far, far greater accolades. The painful journey to this point at long last led to vindication. This is how the real-life Roy of the Rovers became an all-time great: