Retour
Last night, Harry Kane became the first Englishman to win the Ballon d'Or for the first time since Michael Owen in 2001, and in being given the award, the Bayern Munich man described it as "a dream come true."
The England captain beat Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal to win the award after his 73-goal season for both club and country, in which he played a key role in Bayern Munich winning the Bundesliga and DFB Pokal, as well as getting to the Champions League semi-finals, and England finishing third at the World Cup.
Kane became only the fifth man from England to win the award after Sir Stanley Matthews, who was in attendance last night, Sir Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Michael Owen.
As for Kane, he has come a long way since his multiple seasons out on loan in the EFL with Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester, to become both Spurs' and England's all-time goalscorers, and now a Ballon d'Or winner, but the biggest winners in all this might be the Premier League clubs who don't have to play against him twice a season anymore.
The 18th place went to former Chelsea defender, Marc Cucurella, mainly for his World Cup performances and defensive work for Chelsea last season.
When the 33-year-old plays against Chelsea, he normally performs, as he does when he comes up against most opposition. The Blues first became aware of "Hurricane" on New Year's Day of 2015, when the striker hadn't even made his England debut yet but put Chelsea on notice, scoring two and setting up two more in a 5-3 win to halt Chelsea's almost inevitable title charge.
But after that impressive introduction to Chelsea, Kane wasn't always the most prolific, scoring just eight more goals in his next 21 appearances for both Tottenham and Bayern Munich, having 10 goals and two assists in 23 games against Chelsea, putting the West London side joint eighth in the list of the teams Kane performs best against.
That being said, in Kane's last three games against the Blues, he's scored four goals, two coming in last year's Champions League group stage, which Bayern won 3-1, with the Englishman winning and scoring a penalty before pouncing on a Malo Gusto mistake to put the game to bed.
Whilst winning the Ballon d'Or is one of the biggest individual achievements a footballer can win, how Kane speaks about his team and his willingness to win team trophies, his next goal in his career will be to win either the Champions League with Bayern or the Euros and World Cup with England, and with the talent that both sides possess, he can't be that far off from achieving it.