Harry Kane still waiting for career-defining big-game performance despite late goal v PSG | OneFootball

Harry Kane started and finished the scoring in this extraordinary Champions League semi-final, yet ends on the losing side and still without a career-defining standout performance in this sort of game.

Kane’s goal at the Allianz Arena came too late to save Bayern Munich, earning them a 1-1 draw on the night but merely cutting the deficit of a 6-5 defeat on aggregate after that wild first leg last week in Paris.

This game was less batsh*t than this one – yet somehow contained six more attempts on goal. But – barring a disjointed opening 15 minutes to the second half – never less than high-class entertainment.

For Kane, though, another frustrating night despite his late contribution.

The longstanding trophy jibes are no more after collecting his second Bundesliga title, with almost certainly more to follow. The doubts over his standing in the game have been utterly dispelled since his move to Germany.

We still find it curious that it has taken him scoring loads and loads of goals with a better team in a worse league for non-Tottenham fans to finally realise that a man who scored 30 Premier League goals in a season for an Antonio Conte team that could not find its arsehole with both hands might be quite good, actually, but we’re largely at peace with it now.

Suffice to say, Spurs would be even more seasoned relegation battlers by now had it not been for Kane. They might not have exploited the top-end potential of having the world’s most complete striker just fall into their lap, but we’re seeing now just how much strife a guarantee of 20-plus league goals a season delayed for a club so chronically mismanaged.

Just how far Kane was able to carry Spurs was never truly appreciated at the time. Only now with the evidence of both his Bayern exploits and their own struggles has it become clear to all just how good he always was and still undeniably is.

Kane’s place among the best to ever do it is no longer questioned. That, more than the facile trophies he has inevitably collected along the way, has been the true legacy of his move to Bayern. Just being at a Super Club instead of a Banter Club has elevated him to a new level within the game, despite his day-to-day footballing life now being unquestionably easier than it was in London when he was so often under-rated and under-appreciated.

But the one criticism Kane faced even from Spurs fans was over his lack of decisive contributions in the big games that did come along. He was infamously wretched in the 2019 Champions League final, restored to the side on a point of principle when clearly unfit, a bad decision rendered worse still for coming at the expense of semi-final hero Lucas Moura.

That was no one-off, though. FA Cup semi-finals and Carabao Cup finals have passed him by. Even England’s undeniably Kane-influenced recent run of reaching the pointy end of almost every tournament hasn’t afforded Kane himself that big performance in a big game.

It is now the only glaring thing missing from a stellar CV. And the harsh, brutal truth is that even after scoring in both legs of this tie, it remains absolutely the case.

Kane wasn’t bad in this game. It was almost worse than that; for 94 minutes he was barely even in it.

He was, it should be noted, expertly handled by Willian Pacho. Only when the jig was up was he allowed even the sniff of a chance, that rare moment of PSG weakness on a near-perfect night in a way only placing even greater emphasis on just what a number the Parisian defence had done on him up to that point.

Until he collected and scored in brutally, clinically trademark style with only a minute left of injury time and a further goal still required, he had managed only a couple of speculative shots all night. One in each half. Both blocked before they’d travelled more than a yard or two.

Officially, he did register a key pass. We don’t recall it. His pass-completion percentage was 65.5, lower than any other Bayern player on the night.

On the biggest stage and the grandest occasion, he was once again – as so often for Spurs and England before – just too much of a peripheral figure until it was all too late. Unable to impose himself on the game. Unable to do his usual work that extends so far beyond the scope of your standard No. 9.

It is harsh to single him out on a night when Bayern’s attack never quite clicked, where Michael Olise was half-a-yard off it, where Luis Diaz looked more like the Liverpool version we remember whose end product was never fully to be relied on, and where Jamal Musiala couldn’t find a way to get into the game at all apart from a five-minute spell just before half-time.

But being singled out on nights like this is where Kane is at now. It’s dreary to talk about the Ballon d’Or after a semi-final like that, but that’s the conversation Kane is part of and it’s nights like this where such baubles are won and lost.

Ousmane Dembele stepped up. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia really stepped up.

Kane strived but could not match their contribution. Not when it mattered. His goal, so expertly taken when finally able to free himself of the shackles PSG kept him in, only serves as further frustration.

Had he found that moment even five minutes earlier it could all have been so different. But when you are in ‘best in the world’ conversations, these are the little details that matter.

His next chance may come this summer. The pressure will be greater than ever before.