3 hours Ago By Anirudh Menon
It's the 94th minute of Bayern Munich's Bavarian derby against FC Augsburg. Bayern lead 2-0, but the collective foot's never left the accelerator. So, when Leon Goretzka gathers the ball in space down the left wing, his first thought is to look up and look for a pass.
When he does, he sees Harry Kane on the move. Splitting the centre-backs perfectly, the centre forward has made the kind of run that begs for a ball to come in from behind him, and Goretzka obliges. It's a touch overhit, though, and too high for Kane to head it home, but just as the chance seems to have been lost, Kane stretches out a leg.
.. Take a pause, and complete that sentence, will you? '.
..and he controls it, takes a touch and takes a shot (or passes it back into the area if the touch has taken him wide).
' '...
and the ball bounces off it and out of play.' '..
.and he toe-pokes it in like an English Zlatan Ibrahimovic.' '.
..and it's too far away for him to get to and Augsburg keeper Nediljko Labrovic calmly collects.
' If you stop time just before Kane connects with the ball, all these seem perfectly reasonable choices. The kind of play we've seen previously. After all, it's almost always something we've seen before, right? There's so much football happening these days, and the football is in itself so structured -- obsessed with ensuring strikes are taken from areas that have the highest xG -- that it's very rare you see a new kind of goal.
On Saturday, Kane gave us just that. Stretching out his right leg, he controlled the ball perfectly (pause at the moment of control and he's an almost exact replica of the Bundesliga logo) and the ball bounced straight up. It's a touch that no one expected, and Labrovic is completely thrown.
He's already diving to his left, anticipating the Zlatan-toe-poke and from his vantage point on the floor, he can see what comes next. With the ball exactly where he wanted it, Kane calmly nodded it into an empty net with his head. He made it look so simple, the most obvious thing to do.
.. and in that lies Kane's genius.
"I think I'm probably in the best form of my career since I've been at Bayern," he said after the game and the numbers back it up. One of the most prolific goalscorers of this (or any) era, Kane has now taken it to the next level in Germany. This self-assisted header completed his eighth hattrick for Bayern, and it was his 50th goal in the Bundesliga, in just his 43rd league game.
No one has gotten to 50 in Germany's first division faster (the previous record was Erling Haaland's -- he scored 50 in 50). He's now on 64 in 62 in all appearances. Bayern have now taken a six-point lead atop the table, and Kane's edging closer to addressing that one big blemish he has on his resume: the lack of a trophy.
He's doing his bit to make sure it happens. "Harry Kane needs his own ball bag by now," joked Bayern's sporting director Max Eberl post-match. "He always scores so many goals, he always gets to take balls home with him.
We'll soon run out of them for training." This one, though, was special. Unique in its imagination and execution, perfect in its skill, pure in its simplicity.
The kind of goal that will have everyone trying to recreate it -- from schoolgrounds to weekend casuals. For giving us that, Harry Kane takes our Moment of the Weekend..
