All of a sudden none of it matters. Not a frustrating summer in the transfer market, with the lack of a sporting director often apparent. Not missing out on Declan Rice. Not even the uncertainty over the goalkeeping position. Harry Kane’s impending arrival at the Allianz Arena is a moment of triumph for Bayern Munich, and they are right to celebrate it.
How badly Bayern have needed this, on so many levels. Not necessarily on a statistical one – the team scored 92 Bundesliga goals last season, compared with 97 in 2021-22, a negligible difference in light of the exit of Robert Lewandowski, who had scored 35 of that latter figure. There were and are goals from everywhere in the squad: from Thomas Müller, Jamal Musiala, Serge Gnabry, Kingsley Coman, Leroy Sané and even the promising Mathys Tel.
Yet the importance of Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting for a large part of last season – earning him a lucrative €10m (£8.6m) deal to come back this term – underlined how important a reference-point centre-forward is for this team. His 17 goals in all competitions were handy but his use as an attacking foil made Bayern a better, more coherent team. Julian Nagelsmann juggled continually in the opening stanza of last season to find the right post-Lewandowski formula, beginning with Gnabry and Sadio Mané as the front pair in a 4-4-2, and later shifting towards a front three, rotating the central role.
This created its own problem in terms of dressing-room harmony, which Kane should help to soothe, too. When Lewandowski was in situ there was never any doubt; he was the central figure, never rested and the hierarchy was clear. When he was taken away, all of a sudden a cluster of top-class forwards were jostling for supremacy, creating tension and unease. Whether that atmosphere led to clashes such as Mané’s and Sané’s infamous dispute after the Champions League defeat at Manchester City – which all but brought the curtain down on the Senegal player’s spell in Bavaria – is open to interpretation.
With Kane will come certainty and equilibrium. Billing him as a belated replacement for Lewandowski is not quite right. If Bayern were going more like-for-like, Napoli’s Victor Osimhen – in whom they had interest, only to be scared off by the price – would have been a more natural choice, but Kane’s tactical fit is a compelling one.
If the injection of creativity at Tottenham with James Maddison and Manor Solomon had suggested the possibility of Kane shifting to a more penalty-box role, he will be enjoyed for his penchant for dropping deeper and seeking out teammates at Bayern. With the speed they have on the flanks, his contribution should be much more than goals, with Sané, Gnabry, Coman and company surely rubbing their hands at the sort of service they can expect.
That Kane will excel on an individual and collective level is hardly up for debate. He is a sure thing. Yet he arrives at a club looking far from their confident selves after a testing season.
Bayern should not be going into this season as champions again, having been handed the Bundesliga title on the final day in May by Borussia Dortmund’s slip. They are more than aware of that. Even with the title still in play, they ditched Oliver Kahn as their CEO and Hasan Salihamidzic as the sporting director before the final game at Köln, with the news leaking on the day. Inevitably Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge have come back to fix things after the failed handover. Thomas Tuchel is taking a greater role in transfers, with the appointment of a sporting director not expected until later in the year.
Kahn and Salihamidzic paid the price for their botched squad rebuild. Nagelsmann made do with a creaking defence for most of his tenure (a feature that also let Tuchel down against City) and, although the impressive Kim Min-jae has arrived from Napoli, the goalkeeper situation is a real concern. Manuel Neuer is not quite ready after the skiing injury sustained after the World Cup, yet Bayern let Yann Sommer and Alexander Nübel go. The haphazard way such a key position is being dealt with is not especially Bayern-like.
These are the issues that cast doubt over whether Kane, for all his excellence, is the key to unlocking another Champions League triumph. The idea of one superstar being able to push a contender over the top has taken a beating in recent years, with Cristiano Ronaldo’s signing at Juventus and Lionel Messi’s sojourn at Paris Saint-German leaving both clubs farther away from the title – though Kane is younger than both were on arrival and plainly still at his peak.
What is sure is that scrutiny will be intense, internally and externally. Kane is not only a record signing for Bayern. This is only the fourth time they have spent more than €50m on a player (the other three, Kim, Lucas Hernández and Matthijs de Ligt, were defenders) and there has been lively debate in Germany over whether they should have laid out so much on a 30-year-old with one year left on his deal, even if it is the England captain.
The pressure of Bayern is very particular, and debate is always very public. That, more than anything, will be something for Kane to adapt to.
