We are a little over a month from the 70th Ballon d’Or and there is no runaway favorite. You can make a case for Kylian Mbappé, who led the World Cup and Champions League in goals, or for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Fabián Ruiz after back-to-back Champions League titles, with Ruiz adding the World Cup with Spain.
For me the winner should be Harry Kane. The England captain and Bayern Munich striker just put together the best season of his career and one of the rarest of this century: 72 goals, 61 for his club and 11 for his country, at 1.18 goals per game. Only Lionel Messi’s 82 in 69 appearances in 2011/12 sits above that run.
Harry Kane NFL Kicker Role While Finishing Career in MLS
Kane is starting his fourth season in Germany and the 33-year-old England captain is out of contract at the end of the year, so as he put it himself it “won’t be too long” before news of an extension.
When he looks further ahead, toward the end of his soccer career, he is still circling a change of sports. For years he has talked about golf, but he knows how hard it is to go pro.
American football is the more serious thought, specifically becoming a specialist NFL placekicker, and he raised a new wrinkle this week: finishing in MLS and kicking in the NFL at the same time if the calendars line up.
“That is something I will try and look at a bit more seriously,” Kane told reporters at St George’s Park. “It all depends on what happens in my career over the next five or six years, the motivation and what I want to do. The NFL is a lot more realistic than the golf one, let’s put it that way.”
The reality is that it’s an extremely complicated issue, considering the importance of both sports. Even though an NFL kicker’s job is essentially just to kick the ball, pressure and practice are still essential because kicking is not the same as hitting. Also a team will always want its players to be fully committed.
He pointed to Brandon Aubrey, the Dallas Cowboys kicker who played for Toronto FC in his early 20s, and said his own game translates better to kicking than to anything else.
Penalties already come with similar pressure and technique. “Maybe if I am in the MLS in the future or somewhere like that it might be a thing where you could connect the two, with the seasons,” he said.
“But it is in the back of my mind because right now, I am feeling that I want to play as long as I can here.”
He also knows how TV makes elite sports look simple. Watching it is one thing. Doing it at that level is another. For now the focus stays on Bayern and England. The dual-sport idea is just sitting there if the next five or six years open that door.
Read the full article here
