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Why do we assume Harry Kane wants money and trophies?

whitestreak

SC Supporter
Dec 8, 2006
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From Football 365 a great read

Another weekend, another brace of goals for Harry Kane and another huge amount of pleasure for all of us neutrals.

Quite possibly the most likeable English footballer of his generation and a proper local hero, he seems to have no airs and graces, nothing ostentatious and vulgar, nothing egotistical and overbearing. He seems to just turn up, be brilliant and then go home again, pleased with his day’s work. A simple, solid, stable citizen who has a simple, solid, stable outlook on life, who is picking up £90 grand per week basic wage in return for playing for his local club. What could be better? Nothing.

So why are we told time and again by ex-players and journalists that he’ll definitely move when Real Madrid or Bayern or Barcelona, in the typical football cliche, ‘come knocking’?

Some seem obsessed about this because, in yet another slack-jawed media cliche, “you don’t turn down a Real Madrid or a Barcelona”. Aside from the extremely annoying unnecessary addition of an “a” in front the name of the club, these pundits also seem to think that because Tottenham don’t pay the highest wages, this is another reason Kane will leave.

It is perhaps typical of greedy, overbearing people to assume that everyone is as greedy and overbearing as they are. They judge people by their own standards. It seems highly improbable that Kane is like that at all. He seems a plain, endearingly somewhat gauche lad who has just married his girlfriend of five years, a girl he knew in school. They have two labradors and a new baby. This is not a flash man who has sought to live the life of a louche lothario.

Some people just have different values.

I have a pal who works in the third sector and is paid a typical average wage in UK. She could double her money in the private sector doing a similar job, but she chooses not to. Why? Because she loves where she works, she loves who she works with and she loves the satisfaction her job gives her. In short, she’s happy and really understands the true value of that happiness. She says: “Being able to buy more things or live in a more expensive house won’t make me happier or more fulfilled than I am now. I have enough to live on. What more do I need than that?”

Indeed.

And this is someone on just 25 grand a year. Harry is on £90,000 per week basic. Across his remaining career, he’ll likely earn well north of £50million even if he never leaves Spurs. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone insisting Spurs won’t keep him unless they pay Manchester City-style wages that maybe he’s more than happy with these level of earnings already.

He has no need, nor want, for even more money. In fact, I’m sure he’d play for Spurs for £500 a week if that was the going rate. Not everyone measures their worth with a money ruler. Not everyone wants to keep buying ever more expensive things. Some people know that money can buy you a massive watch, but it can’t buy you love, contentment, or the sort of respect that matters.

It seems odd that this financial argument is so often asserted as though it is always true of everyone. Yes, we know it is certainly true for some, but many people are simply not like that. Frankly, Kane is already earning more money than he’ll ever be able to spend. Isn’t that by definition, quite profoundly enough?

The next argument as to why Kane will move sooner or later is that he will “want to win things” so if Spurs don’t, he’ll be off. I’m sure he does want to win things, but he wants to win things with Spurs, because Spurs is his club. Maybe just playing for them is actually more important than anything else to him. It is far from impossible that is the truth.

We have seen examples of this in the past. Matt Le Tissier is the most obvious one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to maximise your happiness and contentment over earnings and silverware. Not wanting to move doesn’t show lack of ambition, it shows good self-knowledge. If Harry’s ambition is to be a great centre-forward for Tottenham Hotspur, he is already fulfilling it.

One of Thatcherism’s greatest victories was to firmly establish the idea that humans are units of earning power who will always seek to maximise their income over and above anything else. Capital is what counts and everything and everyone must bend the knee in obeisance to it. That’s where the kind of thinking which says an already rich footballer always moves on for even more money comes from. And yet, despite the brief popularity of this destructive, some might say evil and most certainly venal outlook, many humans rather stubbornly continue to be more than mere
money hoovers. Indeed, for the first time in a generation, the idea that the pursuit of materialism is a vapid, soulless way of life has gained really widespread traction during an epidemic of economic and psychological depression.

Pundits and ex-players know that your success as a footballer is as much psychological as skillful. If your head is in the right place, it allows you the confidence to perform. So if everything is going well, why would you risk corrupting the combination that has made you one of the best strikers in the world by moving to another cub where everything would be different? You wouldn’t. And that’s why Kane won’t voluntarily move from Spurs and no amount of money or lure of silverware will change that.

Harry Kane is really nice and ordinary, and in being really nice and ordinary, he is being extraordinary. And that’s another big reason to love him.

John Nicholson
 
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Dougal

Staff
Jun 4, 2004
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It all comes down to a single phrase.

Harry Kane is too good to be true.
 

dagraham

Well-Known Member
Sep 20, 2005
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It’s a game of two halves and other such cliches.

Agree with the 1st half, don’t necessarily agree with the 2nd half.

Matt le Tissier is the only example that can be found. In other words it’s the exception to the rule. Yeah Kane could be another exception, but I’ve heard enough from Kane to read between the lines and conclude that it’s wishful thinking.

Good article though and it would be nice if everyone just shut the fuck up about Madrid, Utd etc and just let us get on with improving every season.
 

jezz

Well-Known Member
Aug 21, 2013
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8,650
He earns alot more than 90,000 a week.
Win bonus goal bonus.
Pundits and journalists conveniently forget there sponsorships deals which boost there income massively.
Kane will only leave to win trophies if we don't.
 

Spurs' Pipe Dreams

Well-Known Member
Aug 14, 2011
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It’s a game of two halves and other such cliches.

Agree with the 1st half, don’t necessarily agree with the 2nd half.

Matt le Tissier is the only example that can be found. In other words it’s the exception to the rule. Yeah Kane could be another exception, but I’ve heard enough from Kane to read between the lines and conclude that it’s wishful thinking.

Good article though and it would be nice if everyone just shut the fuck up about Madrid, Utd etc and just let us get on with improving every season.

Shearer went to Newcastle rather than the almost guaranteed trophies at Yanited. Totti never left Roma, Maldini could've gone anywhere at the height of his powers and once Juve started winning everything.
 

dagraham

Well-Known Member
Sep 20, 2005
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Shearer went to Newcastle rather than the almost guaranteed trophies at Yanited. Totti never left Roma, Maldini could've gone anywhere at the height of his powers and once Juve started winning everything.

Yeah fair enough, it could happen. I'm not saying it's impossible, just think it's unlikely unless we win stuff. Shearer had already won the league and I'm sure Maldini won plenty at Milan.
 

Dougal

Staff
Jun 4, 2004
60,346
129,921
He earns alot more than 90,000 a week.
Win bonus goal bonus.
Pundits and journalists conveniently forget there sponsorships deals which boost there income massively.
Kane will only leave to win trophies if we don't.
With Kane's goal bonus added he's probably one of the best paid players in the world.
 

Gaz_Gammon

Well-Known Member
Apr 16, 2005
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Quite possibly the most likeable English footballer of his generation and a proper local hero, he seems to have no airs and graces, nothing ostentatious and vulgar, nothing egotistical and overbearing

The same could be said of Bale, Modric and to an extent Berbatov Sheringham and Keane regarding their characters (obviously not Nationality). Eventually they all wanted a move for more money and the chance to win Silverware.

At the end of the day i have seen each of them kiss the badge on their shirts when at Spurs, and each have put in a transfer request. The crest and history of a club (any club) bears little thought when a player wants out with a chance to win something at another club and a huge pay rise to-boot. The fans, fellow pro's and coaches pale into insignificance when the option to treble or quadruple their income and likelihood of winning a trophy becomes a near certainty.

Harry Kane i suspect is no different and who can blame him, i for one certainly could not, if after next season for example he decides that his future both financially and professionally lies elsewhere? If a player such as Ronaldo ups and leaves (at that time) one of the most successful (on the pitch) clubs in World football, a club that could and was providing him with both financial and professional fulfillment beyond any players dream then it could very well happen to Harry Kane. No one turns down a side like Real Madrid, no one.

The end of this season will see a defining moment in Spurs history (aside from the move back to the new stadium) and that is if Daniel Levy can manage to keep the two most influential people at the club, which is Mauricio Pochettino and Harry Kane. To lose one would be tragic but to lose both would be a disaster.

I for one just couldn't contemplate taking up my seat at the new stadium and seeing neither being at the club anymore.
 

lol

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2008
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because jealousy.

a young, super hot, 10/10 face and body, superb cook, smart, funny, plays video games, loyal as fuck gf?

she must be a whore.
 

Spurs' Pipe Dreams

Well-Known Member
Aug 14, 2011
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Yeah fair enough, it could happen. I'm not saying it's impossible, just think it's unlikely unless we win stuff. Shearer had already won the league and I'm sure Maldini won plenty at Milan.

I agree it's very unlikely that he'll be a one club man, we start winning stuff in the new stadium and it becomes more likely though
 

pffft

some kind of member
Jul 19, 2013
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.



Matt le Tissier is the only example that can be found. In other words it’s the exception to the rule.

.

Plenty of one-club players out there, but if we're going by one-club players who definitely could have moved to win (more) trophies/earn more, then just off the top of my head I can think of a few:

Malpas (Dundee Utd)
Bellini (Atalanta)
Zamora (Sociedad)
Totti (Roma)
De Rossi (Roma)

Closer to home?

Bill Nicholson (also won the league as a player, but could have gone elsewhere)

And I'm amazed you forgot this one: Ledley King.


There's bound to be more. It's very rare, but there's definitely more than one example to be found.
 

Bulletspur

The Reasonable Advocate
Match Thread Admin
Oct 17, 2006
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25,246
He earns alot more than 90,000 a week.
Win bonus goal bonus.
Pundits and journalists conveniently forget there sponsorships deals which boost there income massively.
Kane will only leave to win trophies if we don't.
The author did say basic wage implying there were add ons
 
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