It was approaching midnight when Harry Kane emerged to take the congratulations of the media patiently waiting for a word with Bayern Munich's new Ballon d'Or winner. He had not even played in their 6-1 cup win over Magdeburg but it still felt like his night. He joked about his children playing with the trophy.
He responded to calls for him to be knighted: "I would feel weird if everyone called me Sir." Bizarrely, he even faced questions about being given a golden schnitzel: "I saw that one more as a trophy than to eat it." Kane insists that he was ready to play but it is clear that what he refers to himself as "a big emotional load" has had an impact on him. "It feels like the Freiburg game was six weeks ago," he said. In reality, it was Sunday.
"So much has happened in the last 48 hours." Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Naturally, much of the focus since has been on him becoming only the fifth Englishman to claim this award and the first in a quarter of a century. But Bayern have waited two decades longer than that to see one of their own claim this prize. Even on a night when he was warming the bench only to find that his team did not need him - memo to Cristiano Ronaldo on that one - it was a special occasion.
When he started going through his routines early in the second half, the chant of 'Harry' went up. There had already been a guard of honour on his return to the Allianz Arena. Such is Kane's character, he was not entirely comfortable: "Even when I was walking out to warm up and they are all there clapping, I don't know, I get quite embarrassed by it." But he is having to get used to it.
There are more tributes planned for Kane's playing return against Borussia Dortmund in Der Klassiker on Saturday and the announcement of a new contract at Bayern is imminent. This move to Germany has been a triumph. Not everyone thought so at the outset.
Former Bayern president Uli Hoeness suggested that even he thought a nine-figure sum was crazy. He has since said that he would have bought him for 150 million euros. That sums up how Kane has surpassed expectations.
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