Bundesliga
Guirassy vs. Kane: clash of the striking titans
Serhou Guirassy and Harry Kane have lit up the Bundesliga with their goals this season - now the sharpshooting duo face off on Matchday 32, with the most prolific man over the next 90 minutes of the Bundesliga campaign likely to decide Saturday's game between VfB Stuttgart and Bayern Munich.
bundesliga.com turns its focus on the two men who have struck a jaw-dropping 60 goals between them in the league campaign so far.
When the England captain arrived at Bayern last summer, he came as a player who had scored 213 goals in just 320 English Premier League appearances. There was no doubt the record German champions had found the ready-made replacement they had been seeking for Robert Lewandowski. Yet, Kane still managed to surprise even his teammates.
"I knew he was good, but I didn't know he was that good," Kingsley Coman said of England's record goalscorer in an interview with Sky Sports. With Kane smashing 18 goals in his first 12 appearances in the Bundesliga, you can see why even the France international might be just a little bit impressed. In fact, Kane had already surpassed last season's Torjägerkanone-winning total of 16 - shared by Christopher Nkunku and Niclas Füllkrug - in just 11 games.
Watch: Harry Kane - My Story
That blockbuster start to the season also saw the former Tottenham Hotspur man become the first to achieve back-to-back hat-tricks in the German top flight since former Stuttgart and Bayern man Mario Gómez back in 2011 as he got half of the 12 goals Bayern smashed against Darmstadt (8-0) and Borussia Dortmund (4-0) on Matchdays 9 and 10.
"It's the first time [to have scored such a goal]. I have tried a few times in my career, but they always went out for a goal-kick," said Kane after striking from inside his own half of the centre circle against Darmstadt. "I saw out of the corner of my eye that the goalkeeper was out. We were leading 4-0 and I thought to myself, 'Why not?'"
Watch: Every Kane goal so far in the Bundesliga
It is not much of a surprise that Kane has maintained his peerless scoring form. To prove he is human, he 'only' scored four times in a run of eight matches between Matchday 18 and 24. But he has since scored eight goals in his last seven league outings to move onto 35 ahead of Matchday 32 and look odds-on to follow Gerd Müller and Lewandowski as the third Bayern player to win the European Golden Boot.
It also raises the question: can he beat Lewandowski's outrageous tally of 41 Bundesliga goals?
His match-winning brace against Eintracht Frankfurt on Matchday 31 means he is one goal behind where Lewandowski was during his record-breaking 2020/21 campaign. Kane is currently averaging a goal every 79 Bundesliga minutes, meaning he would end the season on 38 strikes given his club has three games left. In the Hinrunde fixtures against Stuttgart, Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim - Bayern's remaining Rückrunde fixtures - Kane scored four goals, which would leave him on 39 if he repeated that.
"It's possible, but I have to get a move on, I have to score some goals in the coming weeks," said Kane after scoring twice against Frankfurt, his fifth brace of a remarkable maiden season in Germany. "It's within reach, but it's going to depend on the last three games."
At the start of the season, plenty of people would have predicted Kane would top the Bundesliga scoring charts for 2023/24. Very few, and probably even no one, would have suggested Guirassy's name as the man to be just behind him.
History was not on the Guinea international's side. His previous best tally for a Bundesliga season was 11, which came in the 2022/23 campaign. Before that, his personal record had been 10 while with Rennes in Ligue 1 in 2020/21. His goals last season kept Stuttgart in the top flight. Now that he has struck 25 in his 25 league appearances this season, no wonder Stuttgart are keen to keep him in their squad.
Watch: The making of Serhou Guirassy
"We are, of course, going to push our limits to be able to work with Serhou in the long term," said Stuttgart sporting director Fabian Wohlgemuth.
Pushing the limits is what Guirassy has done this season. His first Bundesliga hat-trick in the Matchday 4 win over Mainz took him to eight goals in the opening four matches, and he went on to make that 10 in five before he finally drew a blank in the Matchday 6 reunion with former club Cologne.
Since, he has gone on to break former Stuttgart icon Gómez's club record of 24 goals in a single German top-flight season that dated back to 2008/09. "We're running out of superlatives," said Stuttgart coach Sebastian Hoeneß. "He's now broken the record, which it was clear he was going to do. But it's still fantastic. He's a great player, a great striker and a great guy who's just really good for us."
Watch: All Guirassy's Bundesliga goals in 2023/24
Guirassy has drawn a blank in his last two league games, meaning his 25 goals came in just 23 appearances at a rate of 1.27 per 90 minutes. That is a higher scoring rate than Kane, Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappé and Manchester City's ex-Borussia Dortmund forward Erling Haaland.
Guirassy and Deniz Undav, who has scored 18 times himself this season - the fourth-highest individual tally in the division - have deservedly gotten the headlines. They have set a new combined club record goals tally, comfortably surpassing the previous record of 37 goals that Jürgen Klinsmann and Karl Allgöwer got in the 1985/86 season.
With a top-five finish and first Champions League qualification since 2008/09 already secure ahead of taking on Bayern, Stuttgart have claimed their reward for a remarkable campaign. They can now go out and express themselves with even greater freedom than they have so far this season. The question now is just how many goals Guirassy will get as he looks to extend his record-breaking form.