"He's a fantastic player and guy. He's probably our best player of the season so far and incredibly important for us."
Those words were not about Harry Kane but from the mouth of Bayern Munich's new talisman. According to the England captain, Leroy Sane has been behind Bayern's prolific start to the season. Almost everyone else would credit Kane himself.
Each outing for Kane invariably brings another goal and another record. When players exhaust the normal slew of superlatives - Heidenheim manager Frank Schmidt could only muster: "Just the way he plays, his game is that of a great player" - the modern tendency is to quantify their greatness with increasingly obscure statistics.
The Bundesliga, with a history of rigorous facts and figures since its relatively late inception in 1963, has no shortage of detailed milestones for Kane to surpass.
Here are just some of the records that the humble strike can claim in the coming months.
Most goals after every matchday
Kane's Bayern career began with a false start in the German Supercup. After the 3-0 drubbing dished out by RB Leipzig, Thomas Tuchel fretted: "I'm just sorry for Harry Kane. He probably thinks we haven't trained for four weeks."
However, the "Kane effect" that Tuchel predicted has been prevalent since his top-flight debut. After seemingly every round of Bundesliga matches, Kane has claimed another record by scoring more goals than any other player at this stage of the season.
A brace against Heidenheim took his tally to an unprecedented 17 goals across the first 11 weeks of a season. There are still 23 matchdays left, giving Kane at least 23 more records to claim.
Most hat-tricks in a single Bundesliga season
Kane's last Premier League hat-trick came against a Southampton team managed by Mauricio Pellegrino. The former Tottenham Hotspur talisman racked up eight trebles in England's top flight but registered his final treble in 2017.
Now, as Thomas Muller joked, he is plundering so many hat-tricks he may not have any room left in his hotel suite. Kane already has three Bundesliga balls dotted around his room - which is probably big enough at £10,000-per-night.
The German definition of a hat-trick is infamously harsh - no other player, teammate or opponent, can score in between the three goals, which all have to arrive in the same half. But using the universal criteria of any three goals in the same game, the record for Bundesliga hat-tricks in a single season stands at just five. Kane is more than halfway towards a milestone jointly shared by Robert Lewandowski (2020/21) and Mario Gomez (2010/11),
Most goals in a single game
If Kane were to set his sights beyond three goals, he would be chasing down Dieter Muller. The former FC Koln forward scored six goals in his side's 7-2 thumping of Werder Bremen in 1977.
Muller's double treble - which included an unprecedented four headers - is unmatched, although there was room for improvement. "I could have even scored two more," Muller remarked years later, "I can still remember the chances I threw away."
Kane has only ever scored as many as four goals once in his professional career. However, he racked up that quartet at the end of the 2016/17 season, when Spurs had nothing to play for but while he chased down Romelu Lukaku. Kane duly won that year's Premier League Golden Boot. If a record is in his sights, Kane will go for it.
Most goals in the Hinrunde
The much-cherished winter break in the Bundesliga splits the season in two; the Hinrunde and the Ruckrunde.
Kane, after forging his way through the Premier League where the fixtures only increase over the festive period, will not have to leave anything in the tank as Bayern charge towards the halfway point.
Lewandowski boasts the record for most goals in the first half of the season with 22 - Kane already has 17. Bayern's final five league games of 2023 should offer the Englishman ample opportunity to break the Pole's tally.
Immediately after the November international break, Bayern are up against the Bundesliga's bottom two; Koln and Union Berlin. In fact, Stuttgart - who can boast Serhou Guirassy, the striker closest to Kane in the goal charts with 15 - are Bayern's only upcoming opponents inside the division's top six.
Bayern Munich's remaining Bundesliga fixtures in 2023
Most goals in a debut Bundesliga season
West Germany icon Uwe Seeler holds the record for most goals in a debut Bundesliga season with 30 but there is an asterisk next to that accolade. Seeler, cruelly dubbed "the fat man" from a young age, had been the figurehead of Hamburg's attack for the best part of a decade by 1963 yet had no organised league to display his talents.
Once the Bundesliga was belatedly formed in 60 years ago, Seeler was crowned the inaugural Torjägerkanone (top scorer).
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar almost broke Seeler's record during his maiden campaign in Germany with Schalke in 2010/11, but just fell shy with 29 goals. Kane just needs to average one goal every 148 minutes to break Seeler's high watermark.
Most Bundesliga goals for an English player
English players don't always make for the best travellers. When Luther Blissett joined AC Milan, he lamented: "No matter how much money you have here, you can't seem to get Rice Krispies."
Tony Woodcock managed to locate a suitable breakfast while racking up 39 Bundesliga goals across two spells with Koln. "The game wasn't better or worse," the former Nottingham Forest forward remembered, "it was just different."
No other Englishman has been able to match Woodcock's glut, with Jadon Sancho (38), Kevin Keegan (32) and Jude Bellingham (12) the only other ex-pats to break double digits prior to Kane's arrival.
Most Bundesliga goals in a season
In the 90th minute of the final game of the season, Lewandowski had done it. For decades, Muller's return of 40 goals in a single Bundesliga campaign - which only comprises 34 games - from 1971/72 was a record that would seemingly never be beaten.
Just the year before, Lewandowski had called the feat "impossible". But the stars aligned during a glorious 2020/21 campaign for LewanGOALski. Three years on, Kane is on course to do the impossible as well.
With 17 goals from his first 11 league games, a crude and highly unscientific projection that has caught the public's attention predicts Kane to score around 52 goals this season.
Kane is significantly over-performing in front of goal, scoring around six goals more than Opta's xG model would expect (via FBref) - but finishing hot streaks can last an entire season. While it is highly unlikely Kane will hit the half-century mark, he may join the select 40 club.
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This article was originally published on 90min as The Bundesliga records Harry Kane could break with Bayern Munich this season.
