By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-06-10 10:48:49 | Updated at 2026-06-12 12:44:31
2 days ago
Harry Kane scored more goals than anyone else in Europe’s top five leagues in 2025-26, by some distance. Can he carry that form into the World Cup and give England a huge chance of their first major trophy in 60 years?
It’s the hope that kills you.
England fans know that all too well. The ‘30 years of hurt’ warbled about in the song Three Lions have since doubled, and yet, as we head into the 2026 World Cup, optimism is relatively high as far as the fans are concerned.
It can often feel like a fool’s errand to whip up excitement about England’s prospects ahead of a major tournament, mainly because of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary from past experiences, but there is at least one reason why hopes can be nudged in a positive direction with relatively sound evidence this time.
Harry Kane has already played in two World Cups and three European Championships for his country, and England haven’t won any of them. However, the Three Lions’ captain arguably arrives at this tournament in the form of his life, which is saying something for a player with his record. He might even be the best player on the planet at this moment in time.
After several mightily impressive years at Tottenham, Kane moved to Bayern Munich in 2023 in search of silverware to go with his glut of goals. He was made to wait a year after the phenomenal exploits of Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen in 2023-24, but he has hoovered trophies up since. He now has two Bundesliga titles to his name along with a German Supercup and DFB-Pokal.
In 2025-26, Kane scored a remarkable 61 goals in 51 appearances for Bayern across all competitions. Not only was that the best return of his career in a single campaign, but it was 19 goals more than any other player from Europe’s top five leagues last season (not including the 2025 Club World Cup). Kylian Mbappé scored the next most with 42.
It was the most goals scored in a single campaign by a player from the top five leagues since Cristiano Ronaldo’s 61 for Real Madrid in 2014-15, and Kane reached the figure in three fewer games (51 vs 54).
Those 61 goals came from an expected goals total (xG) of 44.4, and his overperformance of +16.6 was not only the best by any player from Europe’s top five leagues, it was over double that of his closest rival (Antoine Semenyo’s +7.3 for Bournemouth and Manchester City).
Thirty-six of his goals came in the Bundesliga. That was at least 17 more than runner-up Deniz Undav (19), and the largest such margin in the division in 54 years when Gerd Müller hit 40 in 1971-72, ahead of Klaus Fischer and Hans Walitza (22 each).
Kane matched his own personal record in the Bundesliga from the 2023-24 season, and in doing so, became just the second player to score 36+ goals in multiple Bundesliga seasons, after Müller, who did so three times.
He was also a menace to the opposition in the cups. Kane became just the third player to score in every round of the DFB-Pokal in a single season, after Dieter Müller in 1976-77 for FC Köln and Dirk Kurtenbach in 1986-87 for the Stuttgarter Kickers.
He then scored a hat-trick in the 3-0 final victory over Stuttgart, becoming just the fourth player ever to score three goals in a DFB-Pokal final, after Uwe Seeler in 1963 (Hamburger SV), Roland Wohlfarth in 1986 (Bayern) and Robert Lewandowski in 2012 (Borussia Dortmund).
Since he moved to Bayern in 2023, Kane has scored an incredible 13 hat-tricks in all competitions, more than double any other player from Europe’s top five leagues in that time (Erling Haaland the next most with six).
Kane is so much more than a penalty-box striker, though, as his heat maps below show. He actually had a lower percentage of his open-play touches in the opposition’s penalty box for Bayern last season than he did for England in World Cup qualifying, though the Three Lions were arguably even more dominant than Vincent Kompany’s men usually are, and of course, he played significantly fewer minutes for England.
In fact, you wonder how many goals he would score if he were to focus more on the penalty box. With him dropping deep to be a playmaker, sometimes he’s not able to also be in the middle of the penalty area to finish a move off. Two Harry Kanes would be quite the partnership.
The former Tottenham man created 39 chances for Bayern in the Bundesliga this season; only 13 players created more, none of whom were central strikers. Kane managed four assists, too, plus three more in other competitions.
Kane has also delivered on the big international stage before. His eight goals at World Cups across the 2018 (6) and 2022 (2) tournaments were only bettered by Mbappé’s 12. He needs just three goals to overhaul Gary Lineker (10) as England’s all-time leading World Cup scorer.
In terms of overall goals for his country, Kane is well ahead of any other England player now. For decades, no-one could get past Bobby Charlton’s 49 goals, until Wayne Rooney finally did it in 2015. Kane has long since surpassed them both, and his 79 goals in 113 caps is 30 more than Charlton, and 26 more than Rooney. He will be eager to get well into the eighties this summer, too.
Of course, when it comes to the World Cup, the spectre of penalties will always be there, and Kane is unlikely to bat an eyelid.
Fair enough, his missed spot-kick against France in 2022 played a part in England’s elimination, but he has been very good at them since. Kane has scored 41 of his 44 penalties taken at club level since then, scoring at least 11 more penalties than anyone else from Europe’s top five leagues in that time (ahead of Mbappé – 30).
England players have withered under the pressure many times before, but Kane does seem to be of a different breed. As his penalty record shows, he thrives when the pressure is on, almost seemingly revelling in it at times. That response to his miss against France is testament to that.
Assuming they get to the latter stages, Kane will need to show his best when England face the best. He has only scored three times in major tournaments against teams who were in the top 10 of the FIFA rankings at the time of the game, and two of them were penalties (vs France at 2022 World Cup, vs Netherlands at Euro 2024), while the other was a rebound after a saved penalty (vs Denmark at Euro 2020).
If Thomas Tuchel’s side are going to achieve anything at the World Cup this summer, though, they will need their key players to be on form, and if they can see the same shades of Kane that Bayern have delighted in over the last year, they will have a great opportunity to do something special.
No pressure, Harry.
Enjoy this? Add Opta Analyst as a preferred source by clicking here.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
