🚨 Thomas Muller on Harry Kane winning the 2026 Ballon d’Or: “I’m very happy for Harry. Really, really happy. I remember when he first arrived at Bayern. Everybody knew what kind of striker he was, but there was always this conversation about him not winning trophies. And I found that quite strange. You’d watch him score 30 goals, 40 goals, carry his team through difficult matches, and afterwards somebody would still ask why he hadn’t won anything. At some point, I started wondering whether people expected him to score the goals and then go upstairs to the club offices and organise the trophy presentations himself. I remember one afternoon at Sabener Strabe, we were sitting together after training. Somebody had made another joke about his time at Tottenham. Harry smiled, as he usually does. I asked him, ‘Does it ever annoy you?’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘All the jokes. People talking about your career as though you haven’t achieved anything.’ He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘Of course it does. But what am I supposed to do? Stop scoring because they’re laughing?’ I liked that answer. Because that’s Harry. He’s not somebody who needs to tell the whole world how good he is. He comes to training, does his work, scores his goals and goes home to his family. And I think people sometimes mistake that for a lack of ambition. Believe me, Harry is very ambitious. I’ve seen him become frustrated after scoring twice because he missed another chance. I’ve seen him stay angry about a result long after everybody else had started talking about the next match. He wants to win. There was another day when we were talking about his career, and I told him, ‘Harry, when you finally win something, I hope you don’t become unbearable.’ He laughed and said, ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’ I said, ‘Good. Because some of us have won quite a few things, and we’ve managed to remain very humble.’ He looked at me and started laughing again. But I remember those conversations because I know how much this means to him. People used to introduce Harry Kane as one of the greatest strikers never to win a major trophy. Now he’s a Ballon d’Or winner. Think about that. The same player. The same quality. The same dedication. The difference is that people can no longer use an empty trophy cabinet to dismiss everything he’s done on a football pitch. And I hope the young players watching understand something from his story. Sometimes your career doesn’t follow the order people expect. Sometimes you spend years doing everything you can and still go home disappointed. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Harry kept going. And now, when people look back at his career, they’ll see the goals, the records, the trophies and this beautiful individual award. I’ve sent him a message after the announcement. I said, ‘Congratulations, Harry. I think you can finally stop worrying about those Tottenham jokes.’ He’ll probably reply, ‘I’m not sure they’ll ever stop.’ :)) And you know what? He’s probably right. But I think he’ll find them a little easier to laugh at tonight.”