‘Germany appreciate Harry Kane, but in England he is a figure of fun,’ writes Telegraph Sport’s Oliver Brown

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1. ***Telegraph Sport’s Oliver Brown writes:***

   It was the thousand-yard stare that launched a million gratuitous gags. Harry Kane looked, amid the wreckage of Bayern Munich’s 2-0 home defeat to Borussia Dortmund last month, as if his soul had just been sucked from his body. And so, with a cruelty he has come to expect, he found himself bombarded with the usual taunts: that he had moved to a one-team league and still not won a trophy, that Kingsley Coman had collected 11 Bundesliga crowns in a row until Kane became his team-mate.

   Domestically, Kane’s fate this season is sealed. Bayer Leverkusen, 16 points clear in Germany, are poised – with deeply unfortunate timing for the England captain – to claim a first championship in their history. Granit Xhaka, who endured his fair share of Premier League near-misses with Arsenal, is to become a league champion before him. It is all grist to the mill for the Kane mockery industry, already teeming with reminders that the striker has won less major silverware than Jayden Danns, Liverpool’s 18-year-old academy product.

   You wonder if any player of his pedigree has had to cope with so much perverse derision. While Kane must anticipate a wintry reception at Arsenal on Tuesday night, with his childhood support for the club long since rendered redundant by his 14 years of service for Tottenham, it is the ridicule he attracts elsewhere that bewilders. All those cries of “you can take the boy out of Spurs, but not Spurs out of the boy”: are they truly appropriate for someone who has scored 62 goals for England, nine more than any other player who has represented the Three Lions? For all that respect is earned, not given, the sense persists that Kane deserves far better than to be a figure of fun.

   “Madrid had a fantastic striker in Karim Benzema. Now we all forget about him leaving because of Jude’s contribution,” Clotet argues.

   “The pressure is really strong. The stadium is full. They don’t accept second chances in Madrid. And remember that here in Spain, and this is one of the things that I told Jude in Madrid, they do not have a history of good relationships between English players and Spanish football.

   “Some players in the past have not lived up to what we expected. Some have – like Beckham, he was fantastic. So that was going to be pressure on Jude because people were wondering ‘we don’t know how it’s going to be’ and Jude changed all that. He changed it all.”

   Beckham’s legacy is also something that football intermediary Kenneth Asquez, who works extensively in Spain as well as the Premier League, picks up on.

   “His impact has been massive. Huge,” Asquez says. “It has been on a level with David Beckham when he arrived. But Beckham was more from a world-wide media and marketing point of view. Beckham was a great player but technically he is not as good as Bellingham. Beckham also arrived in a Madrid side that was on the crest of a big wave. Bellingham is in a team that is being re-built.”

   Asquez also agrees with Clotet that Bellingham has “broken down a lot of suspicion that there can be in Spain towards British players”. This was fuelled by the relative failure of Michael Owen and Jonathan Woodgate at Madrid and also – despite five Champions League and three league titles – the belief that Gareth Bale refused to integrate.

   **Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/04/09/germany-harry-kane-england-trophies-bayern-munich-euro-2024/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/04/09/germany-harry-kane-england-trophies-bayern-munich-euro-2024/)