Will Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane break Robert Lewandowski's single-season goal record?
Rested, refreshed and raring to go in the Bundesliga once again: Bayern Munich super striker Harry Kane is all set another tilt at a famous goalscoring landmark.
With an astounding 36 goals in just 32 appearances in his maiden Bundesliga campaign, England's record marksman came agonisingly close to Robert Lewandowski's all-time best 41-goal haul in a single German top-flight season.
Last season's valuable learning experience now under his belt, Kane's chances of surpassing the prolific Pole, who himself broke Gerd Müller's previously long-standing record in his penultimate season with Bayern, are mighty.
You can have your say on whether Kane will complete the feat in our vote below:
For the uninitiated, Bayern legend Müller set what was thought to be an unbreakable goal record of 40 in the 1971/72 campaign, a figure that stood as a benchmark for strikers for almost 50 years.
That was until Lewandowski went one better in the 2020/21 campaign, poking in his 41st goal in the 90th minute on the final day of the season to seal a 5-2 win over Augsburg. Surely, people thought, there’s no way anybody can come close to that again.
Watch: All 41 Lewandowski goals in 2020/21
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Lewandowski ‘only’ scored 35 the following year, and while Erling Haaland gave it his best shot at Dortmund, even he only managed 27 and 22 goals respectively in his two full seasons at the club.
All of which makes Kane’s brilliant first season in Germany all the more astonishing. The 31-year-old’s hat-trick in Bayern's 8-1 thrashing of Mainz on Matchday 25 in 2023/24 was his fourth of the campaign, which is something no player had ever managed in their debut season in the Bundesliga.
He was also the first to achieve back-to-back hat-tricks in the German top flight since Mario Gomez back in 2011.
Kane chipped in with five braces, too, and only failed to find the net in nine out of his 32 Bundesliga games en route to the 36-goal mark - setting both a personal best in a league season and a new record for a player in their first Bundesliga term (beating Uwe Seeler's 30 in the league's maiden campaign in 1963/64)
Watch: Kane's 2023/24 season in review
The forward - who returned to competitive action with a goal in Bayern's 4-0 DFB Cup first-round victory against Ulm - will have plenty of challengers for the Torjägerkanone, the trophy awarded to the Bundesliga's top marksman. Yet Bayern's No. 9 will look to burst out of the goal-getting gates as he seeks to fend off the likes of Serhou Guirassy, Loïs Openda and Deniz Undav again.
Watch: Kane won the Bundesliga's Goal of the Season last term
As phenomenal as Kane’s scoring exploits were last time out, his unselfish play led to the striker producing eight Bundesliga assists, meaning he was directly involved in 44 top-tier goals all in.
Having missed two club games with a back complaint at the tail end of last season before going on to help England reach the Euro 2024 final, Kane is fully fit once more and raring to go as Bayern begin life under new coach Vincent Kompany. Hold onto your hats, because 2024/25 could be a record-breaking Bundesliga season for the Bavarians' super-talented Lononder.
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