Harry Kane has barely had time to pack for Monday night in London before his most powerful backer at Bayern Munich turned up the volume on his future.

Uli Hoeneß, the club’s honorary president, used an interview with German Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag to go public with a double endorsement: a new Bayern contract for the England captain, and the Ballon d’Or at the London Palladium.

Hoeneß told the paper he was optimistic the two sides could reach an agreement, calling Kane a figurehead of the club and saying he would be very sorry to see him leave.

Kane’s current deal runs to the summer of 2027. Sky Sports reported on 16 October that the striker had agreed a new three-year contract in principle that would keep him in Munich until 2029, with the club finalising the paperwork.

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Day-to-day negotiations are being led by chief executive Jan-Christian Dreesen. Hoeneß, who handed over the Bayern presidency to Herbert Hainer in 2019, has previously said he leaves the talks to Dreesen and limits himself to public endorsements. In the Welt am Sonntag interview he went further than that.

“I’m in love with Harry Kane,” he said, praising the striker for guiding Bayern’s younger players and putting his body on the line in every match.

25 years since an Englishman last won it

Hoeneß also made the pitch for the individual honour that has eluded English football for a generation.

“Harry should get the Ballon d’Or. After a season like that, with two titles, so many goals, and reaching the World Cup semi-finals, he would have fully deserved it,” he told Welt am Sonntag.

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The last Englishman to lift the trophy was Michael Owen in 2001. Kane arrives at the ceremony as the bookmakers’ favourite, with Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Real Madrid pair Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé among the challengers.

A release clause already in the past

The urgency behind Hoeneß’s public campaign has a context. Back in February he confirmed that Kane’s release clause for the summer of 2026 had expired, saying the club were “currently under no pressure” with the current contract running until 2027. Eight months on, Bayern want that comfort extended.

Kane joined Bayern from Tottenham in the summer of 2023 and is at the centre of the case Hoeneß built in Welt am Sonntag: two trophies with Bayern and a World Cup semi-final with England across the same season.

The 70th edition of the Ballon d’Or, staged outside France for the first time in tribute to inaugural winner Stanley Matthews, begins at the London Palladium at 8pm local time on Monday, hosted by Thierry Henry and Kate Scott.

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