Let's just say I created a hypothetical soccer player for you.
He's the captain of the national team for one of the countries that claims it created soccer. For this country, he has scored 62 goals -- nine more than any other player to ever represent the team. And so far, he has appeared in 22 total games across the European Championships and the World Cup -- tied for the most with one other player.
His performance at the national-team level is legendary, but it also doesn't touch his level of play at the club level. Since 2010, only five players across Europe's five biggest leagues have scored and assisted more combined goals than him. Four of them no longer play in Europe, and the other one is five years older than he is. Most of those goals, too, came in the toughest and wealthiest league in the world -- a place where he has 19 more goal contributions than anyone else since 2010. At only 30 years old, he has scored 213 goals in that league -- the second most in the history of the competition.
He would've shattered that record had he not moved abroad to a new league, where, in his first season, he has scored 31 goals -- the most by a player in a debut campaign. He still has eight games left to go, too. This new league's full-season record of 41 goals is within his reach. And, as exemplifies his all-around attacking impact, he also has seven assists. Across Europe's major leagues, he has nine more goals plus assists than any other player. The gap between him and second is the same size as the gap between second and 14th.
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Now, if I made you guess, you'd say that this player has won plenty of trophies. A minimum of five, maybe 10, or something more? That kind of goal scoring and creating ability is the driving force behind all of soccer's great teams -- and there are so few players capable of it that the teams with those players tend to monopolize the championships across a given era.
But what if, instead, I told you that this player has never won a trophy. None. Not a continental championship, not an international tournament, not a domestic league, not a borderline-even-serious cup.
You might wonder exactly what I'm beginning to wonder: Is Harry Kane cursed?