Euro-Star: Kane thrives as he hunts down Lewandowski's Bundesliga goal record
Continuing our weekly Euro-Star series, we take a look at the stats behind the best rated performer across Europe but excluding the Premier League, with that covered in the Premier League team of the week write up.
As always, we relied on our X followers to determine who to focus on this week, with Harry Kane claiming 41.7% of the vote, pipping Viktor Gyokeres, Trezeguet and Leon Goretzka to first. Bayern Munich may be enduring a testing campaign but Kane is making the Bundesliga look easy as he hunts down Robert Lewandowski's goal record.
The former Tottenham man moved to within 11 goals of matching Lewandowski's 41-goal haul from the 2020/21 season with a hat-trick in Bayern's resounding 8-1 win over Mainz 05. As one might expect, Kane returned a perfect WhoScored 10 rating in the victory, doing so for the fourth time in a Bundesliga match this season.
With Bayern labouring domestically this season, it's important they keep up the pressure on league leaders Bayer Leverkusen to capitalise on any potential slip up from Xabi Alonso's men. Bayern briefly moved to within seven points of the league leaders as they battered Mainz at the Allianz Arena.
🗳️ 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢-𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥: Vote for which of the weekend's highest rated performers across Europe you'd like to see as the subject of our latest player in focus article 👇
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) March 12, 2024
Kane was directly involved in four of Bayern's eight goals on Saturday, hitting the back of the net with three of nine shots. The England captain made just one key pass in the victory but that chance created resulted in the assist for Jamal Musiala's strike on the hour mark in what was a memorable performance from the summer signing.
While it's been a sub-par domestic campaign for Bayern, who lost the German Super Cup to RB Leipzig back in August and were knocked out of the DFB-Pokal by lowly Saarbruecken in November, Kane can take solace from a stunning debut season in Germany. He might yet earn a Champions League winners' medal, with Kane inspiring Bayern to a last-16 3-1 aggregate win over Lazio.
A few more performances like that seen in the win over Mainz and Kane can undoubtedly look to breaking Lewandowski's goal record and a potential Champions League success as he seeks to win the first piece of major silverware of his career.
