Harry Kane facing unwanted career first in Champions League against former League One defenders

Jan 21, 2026 - 10:30

Harry Kane is closing in on some unwanted Champions League history – and ironically, he might have a history graduate to blame for it.

The Bayern Munich talisman has broken plenty of impressive records this season already, but could now accomplish a rare negative feat.

Kane is on his joint-longest barren run in the Champions League without a goal or assist

Kane became the quickest player to reach 100 goal involvements in the Bundesliga last month and has hit the ground running in 2026.

The England captain has scored in two of his three games this year, to hit at least 20 goals in each of his opening three seasons in Germany.

Kane has been happy to notch just twice across the 16 times Bayern have found the back of the net in January, but that may now change.

Vincent Kompany‘s side returns to Champions League action this week, with the 32-year-old striker keen to break a European drought.

Kane facing unwanted Champions League first

Kane has neither scored nor assisted a goal in any of his last three Champions League appearances, his joint-longest run in the competition along with a three-game spell with Spurs in 2022.

And Bayern’s No.9 could make it an outright fourth against Union Saint-Gilloise – and he can be forgiven for feeling some EFL deja vu.

Looking to keep Kane quiet in his home from home are two English defenders, USG captain Christian Burgess, and teammate Ross Sykes.

The pair have become one of the breakout success stories in the Champions League this season after a Kane-esque rise from the EFL.

European football expert Andy Brassell told talkSPORT.com last month: “I’m sure they’d absolutely relish playing Bayern, both in a defensive and attacking sense. Burgess and Sykes are really useful.

Sykes and Burgess have won every major domestic honour in Belgium

“We keep saying in the image of, say, Arsenal in the Champions League and the Premier League, but also other teams in the context of Europe, how important set pieces are at the moment.

“Having two guys like Burgess and Sykes that you can aim for, I think, is massively helpful in a Champions League context.

“Now, obviously, Burgess is the one who gets most of the headlines, and that’s quite right, because he’s been the longer serving of the two; he’s been there longer.”

Who is Christian Burgess?

The former Arsenal youth prospect earned a trial at Middlesbrough while studying history at the University of Birmingham.

He impressed enough to earn a two-year contract at Boro, but finished his degree on Teeside on the advice of Tony Mowbray.

Burgess made just one league appearance for Middlesbrough in May 2013

Kane was also making his final Championship appearance on the same day for Leicester

‘Extremely clever’

Burgess made his professional debut on the final day of the Championship season in 2013 in a 2-0 loss to Sheffield Wednesday.

The centre-back then had spells in the third and fourth tier with Peterborough and Portsmouth, before taking the chance on Brighton owner Tony Bloom’s Union in the Belgian second division.

Brassell added: “He’s got to the point where he’s wearing the captain’s armband.

“He is a real leader, not just because he’s a good player and a good defender, and he has found it tricky in the Champions League against some elite-level opponents.

“But he’s someone who has not just been a really good player for Union in recent years; he’s someone who really connects with the ethos of the club.

“Now, of course, when he was in the North East, he did a degree at the University of Teesside, he’s an extremely clever bloke, but he’s someone, a footballer who is, I guess, less footballer, more a man who plays football for a living, if that makes sense.

“Because he is someone who shows that he has a life and thoughts outside the game, not just with the degree, but with the way that he’s lent into the way that Union connects with their community.

Burgess – pictured alongside Callum Wilson – was an EFL stalwart before moving to Belgium

Sykes made 101 league appearances for Accrington Stanley

“They’re a club that believes in reducing waste, having a sense of reusing stuff, and being aware of your environment.

“He’s a guy who cycles the games and cycles the training and all that sort of stuff as well.

“And he’s really bought into the values of the football club. And that’s what makes him popular.

“Not just that he’s a guy who’s helped to guide them into Europe and into a Belgian title for the first time in eight years and into the Champions League.

“It’s that he’s a guy who actually gets what the club is trying to do and what the club is trying to be. That’s massively important.”

Burgess and Sykes helped Union win their first league title in 90 years last season

Who is Ross Sykes?

Union were crowned champions within four years of their return to Belgium‘s elite, and Burgess isn’t the only Englishman in defence.

6ft 5in Sykes, released by Burnley aged 11 due to concerns over his height, spent six years at Accrington Stanley in Leagues One and Two.

The 26-year-old joined Union in 2022, two years after Burgess, and scored his first European goal in a 3-1 away defeat to Atletico Madrid.

Brassell explained to talkSPORT. “For Ross Sykes, I guess it’s an even more remarkable story in a sense, in a playing sense, that he’s come over from Accrington and he’s made himself into a top-flight player, a more and more important player as the years have gone by.”

Skyes scored his first European goal at the Wanda Metropolitano

‘Burgess and Sykes are a brilliant story’

“Of course, he’s reached over 100 appearances for the club,” Brassell continued.

“In a modern context, the fact that he’s big and dominating is something that really adds something and is even more useful now than it would have been when he first arrived at the club.

“So he’s adapted brilliantly as well. And the two of them are just a brilliant story. And the whole club is a brilliant story in recent years.”

Against Kane, that story could write its greatest chapter yet…