The strikers’ battle between Harry Kane and Ollie Watkins will rear its head for the first time since July on Wednesday night, albeit in very different form.
Aston Villa’s only previous meeting with Bayern Munich is deified in the minds of Villa fans — the night in late May of 1982 when a single goal from Peter Withe was enough to oust the Bavarians and saw Villa crowed European champions in Rotterdam.
Now to Villa Park, for the first Champions League match it has staged in 41 long years. The visitors? Six-time winners of the competition and Germany’s grandest and greatest club.
And key to both sides’ chances of victory are English strikers at the top of their game. Back in the summer, though, Kane and Watkins were competing in an altogether different sense.
Kane headed into Euro 2024 as England's captain, talisman, all-time record goalscorer, and having netted more goals than any player across Europe last season — Bayern’s failure to win the Bundesliga coming in spite of his extraordinary exploits in his first season in Germany.
His performances at the Euros, however, left a lot to be desired. While netting two close-range finishes and one penalty saw him finish as one of the competition's six joint-Golden Boot winners, he looked leggy throughout the tournament, not his usual commanding self.
Gareth Southgate substituted Kane early in five of England’s seven games. Three of those withdrawals saw him replaced by Watkins.
Against the Netherlands in the semi-finals, Watkins proved England’s hero — and by now a not-so-unlikely hero, on the back of a 27-goal season for Villa. His sensational tight-angle winner with 89 minutes and 59 seconds on the clock was his first major tournament goal, but also arguably a better strike than all 15 of Kane’s.
Though Kane’s Euro 2024 game time was lessened by Watkins’s emergence as a prudent Plan B, and while the Villa man’s England career has been limited by Kane’s status as England’s undisputed No9, they both have huge respect for each other.
Kane acknowledges that Watkins has become the most serious threat to pinching his England shirt as he has encountered in his nine years as England’s starting centre-forward. Other candidates have come and gone, but Watkins has taken his game to new heights under Unai Emery.
Watkins hopes to inherit that England No9 shirt one day, saying on Tuesday: “I want to be the man to play. [Harry] has got the records and scored the amount of goals he has for a reason and he’s well talked-about for a reason.
“He gets all the credit he deserves and he’s put in a lot of hard work over the years to get there. I’m just trying to improve myself day by day.”
Kane came in for criticism after last weekend’s 1-1 draw between Bayern and reigning Bundesliga champions Bayern Leverkusen, when he suffered a blow to the ankle which Bayern are hopeful has now healed. The German tabloid newspaper Bild questioned “the point” of his goals against weaker opposition if he “doesn’t even get a shot on goal in big games”.
All eyes will be on which England striker can turn it on when it really matters
This was at times levelled against the 31-year-old during his time at Tottenham as well, and at the latter stages of tournaments with England, and he will know as well as anyone that the only way to quash such claims is to raise his game in the matches that really matter between now and the end of the season.
Villa and Bayern both won their Champions League openers handsomely, but it is very much advantage Kane in this competition so far. He scored four as Bayern battered Dinamo Zagreb 9-2 a fortnight ago.
Watkins, meanwhile, failed to find the net in the 3-0 win at Young Boys but admits he and Villa are in dreamland even being in the position of hosting Bayern. Did he see this coming when Emery was hired in October 2022? “Not for one minute.”
As Kane heads back home and Watkins prepares for the biggest match of his club career, all eyes will be on which England striker can turn it on when it really matters.
