Harry Kane winning the Ballon d’Or at the end of last month in London was a bit of poetic justice that the award itself has been clamoring for after years of past awards and voting breakdowns laden with controversy. This time around, it was incredibly hard to argue against the 73 goals and 8 assists Kane tallied for Bayern Munich and England from a total of only 65 matches — an unprecedented feat. Real Madrid and France’s Kylian Mbappé and Barcelona and Spain’s Lamine Yamal put up valiant efforts
in trying to beat Kane to the crown with incredible seasons for club and country of their own, but it wasn’t enough to edge out the England skipper.
For now, Kane is switching gears from Bayern to England coming off matches where he hasn’t scored since Bayern’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal in the Champions League on October 21st, but he’s tallied five assists from that same stretch of matches across all competitions. He’s temporarily turned provider for the German Rekordmeister and he set a record for having reached 8 Bundesliga assists after only 9 match weeks. That’s the quickest any player has ever reached that tally at this point of the season.
England have a pair of UEFA Nations League matches against Croatia and Spain coming up, with hopes of eclipsing Spain at the top spot of the Nations League group.
In the Three Lions’ squad, Thomas Tuchel has included Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha, who’s in a good spell of form for Andoni Iraola’s side and will be looking to gain more experience for England’s senior team having made his competitive debut in the 2-0 win over Czechia at the end of September. Ahead of the pair of matches against Croatia and Spain, the Liverpool youngster raved about how big it is for English football that Kane won the Ballon d’Or. After all, he’s the first England player to have won the award since Michael Owen did so back in 2001.
“Harry Kane winning the Ballon d’Or is definitely a big, big thing, being known as the best player in the world. It’s also helped English football now because everyone’s seen one of us win the Ballon d’Or, it is definitely encouraging many more people to wanting to be known as the best player in the world. For me, I would like to achieve it and I think I can do it,” Ngumoha told the Liverpool Echo (via @iMiaSanMia).
Kane can certainly take added delight with the motivation his achievements are giving young English players, and Ngumoha is on a trajectory at Liverpool that could very well turn him into a world-class player. He’s competing for minutes with the likes of Cody Gakpo, Bradley Barcola, Victor Muñoz, and Florian Wirtz, which is a tall order, but he’s been making the most of the opportunities Iraola has been giving him. The Spaniard is gaining a level of trust in the winger and rewarding him with minutes and occasional starts as he rotates the squad from competition to competition.
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