Bayern Munich vs Real Madrid: Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham primed for box office Champions League battle
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Manchester City knocked off their perch, Arsenal stifled and English football, that most inward-looking of beasts, forced to gaze beyond its borders and its twin title-chasers for interest in the Champions League semi-finals.
The search, though, is hardly a taxing one, Tuesday evening’s heavyweight tussle between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid easily enough dressed up as a clash between England’s totem of both past and present, and that of its future, as well as the here and now.
It is Madrid versus Bayern; it’s 20 European titles between them and domestic dominance untold. But really, to us, it’s Harry Kane versus Jude Bellingham, the forces pencilled in to lead a summer push for Euro 2024 glory, for now fissioned, with a place in a Wembley final on the line.
It is, by now, a well-noted curiosity that just at the moment when the Premier League has achieved perhaps its heftiest-ever draw, capable of attracting a moon-shooting Erling Haaland, as well as keeping the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah through the prime years of their careers, England’s two best players have chosen to take their talents elsewhere.
A few noted exceptions aside, English footballers have, after all, traditionally been an insular bunch, less willing to travel the continent than their counterparts from France, the Netherlands, Spain or Portugal.
Even when Kane quit Tottenham for the Bundesliga last summer, it hardly seemed a natural fit, the feeling that Bayern offered the only feasible exit route in a window when England’s captain would sooner have stayed closer to home, with Alan Shearer’s Premier League goalscoring record in his sights.
Instead, it is personal landmarks that have been exceeded, a double against Eintracht Frankfurt this past weekend taking Kane’s tally to 42 goals this season, one more than in his most prolific campaign at Spurs. In the Bundesliga alone, he has 35 in just 31 matches, 10 more than his closest rival.
And yet, it is Bayer Leverkusen’s league, by some margin, both figuratively and definitively, and, as such, it is only the Champions League that can still offer a season’s salvation, the last and least certain leg of what was supposed to be a sure bet: that beyond N17, trophies would be in ready supply.
Bellingham, though, is a different case, the cosmo-Brummie, who at the age of 20 is already on phase two of what feels a deliberate, Napoleonic ploy to traverse Europe, though one we all hope will eventually bring him back to these shores.
A tally of 17 goals from midfield in a side that has all-but won LaLiga does not do justice to his impact in the Spanish capital this summer, his person already taking on a mythic, god-like quality at a club that indulges in that sort of thing like no other.
There remains a degree of personal crusade to Tuesday night’s fixture, too, after Borussia Dortmund, Bellingham’s then-club, were pipped to the title by Bayern in the final minutes of last season.
“Everyone who plays for Real Madrid also plays with the pressure of the shirt,” Bayern boss Thomas Tuchel said on Monday. “[Bellingham] handles it like he has never done anything else before.”
Bellingham’s Madrid look ominously composed, Kane’s Bayern desperate. Which is the more potent state remains to be seen
Heading into the last-eight, there was a view that neither this Madrid, nor this Bayern were vintage editions, one less parroted once Arsenal and City were dispatched.
Still, in Tuesday’s meeting lies all the old glitz and glamour; the verve of Vinicius Jr and Leroy Sane; the steel of Toni Kroos and Joshua Kimmich; and the combined talents of so many, many more.
Bellingham’s Madrid look ominously composed, Kane’s Bayern desperate. Which is the more potent state remains to be seen.
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