On course for Bundesliga record 

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Things are going well for Bayern this season: top of the league, and in the Champions League last 16 and DFB Cup semi-finals – the chance of a treble is still alive. The attacking trio of Harry Kane, Michael Olise and Luis Díaz have played a big part in this. Across all competitions, they have found the net 75 times and are on course to become the first Bundesliga trio to break the 100-goal mark in a single season. However, the legendary record of the statistically best trio in football history is likely to remain unattainable. Barça’s attack, led by Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar, set an unmatched milestone in the 2015/16 season with an incredible 131 goals.

Kane has scored 43 goals so far – 28 of them in the Bundesliga – and is ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland in the race for the European Golden Boot: Robert Lewandowski’s record of 41 goals in a Bundesliga season is getting closer and closer. Olise is also within reach of a record: he has already scored 13 goals and provided 25 assists this season, including 18 assists in the German top flight. He is just four assists away from equalling the record of 22 assists in a single season set by former Leipzig player Emil Forsberg.

Meanwhile, Díaz, who joined from Liverpool in the summer for €70 million, needed virtually no time to settle in, as you would expect from an established top player. Across all competitions, he has scored 19 goals and provided 15 assists in 33 games. He has already surpassed his tally from each of his four seasons at Anfield. So are three Bayern stars at the peak of their powers enough to top Barça’s legendary record?

The Munich trio currently averages 2.16 goals per game, while MSN averaged 2.60 goals per game in 2015/16. To achieve that, Kane, Olise and Díaz would have to improve significantly. It is worth noting that there were and are four more games in LaLiga, so the chance of scoring more goals is higher. However, Kane, Olise and Díaz have six more opportunities to improve their average in addition to the 14 remaining games, thanks to the Champions League and the DFB Cup. Barça reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 2015/16 and won the league and the Spanish Cup.

Barça’s MSN even better than Real’s James, Benzema & Ronaldo

With the transfer of Suárez, who left Liverpool for Barcelona in 2014, he completed what was the best attacking trio in the world for over three years: 122 goals in the 2014/15 season, 131 goals in the 2015/16 season and 110 in 2016/17. This haul not only helped Barça win the Champions League, but also two LaLigas and three Copa del Rey victories. With his €222m transfer, the most expensive in history, Neymar broke up the trio in the summer of 2017. Even the three ‘Madridstas’ of Karim Benzema, James Rodríguez and Cristiano Ronaldo were left behind by MSN at the time. In their most successful season in terms of goals (2014/15), the Madrid trio scored 100 goals between them.

The most successful Real attack was formed by Ronaldo, Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín in the 2011/12 season with 118 goals. With 75 goals to their name so far, the Bayern trio still have some way to go to join the ranks of the most prolific trios in football history – but the 100-goal mark, which has been broken by six trios, should be no problem in their current form. Díaz enthused on Sky: “It makes me very proud to play in a team with Harry and Michael. They are technically spectacular (…) I am very proud to be part of this attack.”

If they reach the DFB Cup final and the Champions League final, the Bayern trio would reach around 117 goals at their current scoring rate. Kane, Olise and Díaz are only 17 goals away from the best season of a Bayern trio. In the 2019/20 season, Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Müller and Serge Gnabry scored an impressive 92 goals. Back then, they won the treble.