Harry Kane

[SpartanSpur]

Kane really doesn't get enough love from a lot of our fans. What a guy. I really hope he becomes our Totti. Hopefully Mourinho can deliver him the silverware he deserves at the club he loves.

 

[RichieS]

As I said, I'm amazed that Kane hasn't been linked to City before (to my mind, any such rumours would have been far more logical/believable than the numerous United ones). But I also agree that it is highly unlikely, based on their previous approach to fees, that City would pay whatever mental sum would be required. I think they're far more likely to go after Lautaro Martinez if they're after a new centre forward this summer.

 

[spursfan77]

As I said, I'm amazed that Kane hasn't been linked to City before (to my mind, any such rumours would have been far more logical/believable than the numerous United ones). But I also agree that it is highly unlikely, based on their previous approach to fees, that City would pay whatever mental sum would be required. I think they're far more likely to go after Lautaro Martinez if they're after a new centre forward this summer.

He will be now by the time matt law logs on here this morning and copies this thread for his next article this week!

 

[Tucker]

As I said, I'm amazed that Kane hasn't been linked to City before (to my mind, any such rumours would have been far more logical/believable than the numerous United ones). But I also agree that it is highly unlikely, based on their previous approach to fees, that City would pay whatever mental sum would be required. I think they're far more likely to go after Lautaro Martinez if they're after a new centre forward this summer.

Martinez or Haaland, surely. Both would be considerably cheaper, and both considerably younger with no recurring ankle injury.

Don‘t get me wrong, I think Harry is great, if not one of the greatest. I just don’t see anyone paying what we want for him when cheaper, younger alternatives are available.

 

[phieffect]

Saw this thread in the transfer rumours section and almost had a heart attack

 

[Saoirse]

Of course City are financially doped, but they actually have a consistent transfer MO. They have walked away from a few deals where the fee was rising into high £60M plus (Sanchez and VVD to name a couple). So yes, they buy a shed load of players at a consistently high fee, but I don't see them breaking their approach and suddenly spending £200 on one player. I think this is a bullshit story/rumour

That was while they were at least pretending to comply with FFP though. Now they've effectively rendered it impotent, it's possible they will change their ways.

 

[Cochise]

I'd rather see him going abroad however I appreciate that he likely wants to top Shearer's total. I want the guy to win things, with us of course, but he's given a lot to this club and unlike Berbatov and Keane I'd have no issue with him leaving. He has been a great servant to this club and will always be welcome even if he leaves for City.

I dislike them passionately, but they are an evil that we have no choice but to live with. I'd genuinely be more upset with him going to UTD (utter ****s) than City, Liverpool I'd be apathetic about.

I'd like him to stay for another year, to see him play under this new manager with a settled team behind him. However if he asks to leave and this £200m bid exists then he can. Timing wise it's bad because of no UCL, but with the current financial climate £200m could remodel our entire team. Trying to shave off £2m here and there in order to make ends meet is not an issue. We could replace Kane for £50-60m, buy Sancho (speaking in hypotheticals) and still have enough to buy the fullbacks we want.

It's all bollocks though unless their owners are looking to really flaunt the FFP rules now that they've dismantled them. Wouldn't put it past them to make such a "fuck you" purchase.

 

[spursfan77]

Saw this thread in the transfer rumours section and almost had a heart attack

How come it is here anyway?

 

[Kingellesar]

As if we could spend £200m on players and make it work.

Kane should not be sold ever, he still has plenty of time on his contract left BUT I get the feeling he and Mourinho both know, this is the season he has to win something or else he will start thinking about going elsewhere to get success. Feels very much like Van Persie at Arsenal situation.

 

[Derryank]

Kane really doesn't get enough love from a lot of our fans. What a guy. I really hope he becomes our Totti. Hopefully Mourinho can deliver him the silverware he deserves at the club he loves.

Frightening to think where we'd be without him the past 5 years... certainly not to the height's we're accustomed too that's for sure.....but *they'll still complain

COYS

 

[emiley heskey]

I hope Kane retires at Tottenham , win 4 premier league titles and 1 europa league, 1 ucl, 2 fa cups and 1 carabao cup ..

 

[Kingellesar]

I hope Kane retires at Tottenham , win 4 premier league titles and 1 europa league, 1 ucl, 2 fa cups and 1 carabao cup ..

So we lose 5 community shields, 2 European super cups and 1 Club World Championship?

Classic Spurs.

 

[sausage]

I hope Kane retires at Tottenham , win 4 premier league titles and 1 europa league, 1 ucl, 2 fa cups and 1 carabao cup ..

Managing who?

 

[ardiles]

I hope Kane retires at Tottenham , win 4 premier league titles and 1 europa league, 1 ucl, 2 fa cups and 1 carabao cup ..

Wot! No more Audi Cups?

 

[CornerPinDreamer]

Wot! No more Audi Cups?

We own it now cause none of the other kids wanted to play

 

[Erm33]

When Kane goes so does Jose. I guarantee you having Kane is the reason Jose took the job. He's confident that building a strong defence that doesn't conceed many goals and having Kane up top guarantees you goals that'll win matches.

Jose's success is built around a goal machine up front and strong miserly defences. He'll sort our defence out this season and just hope that Kane stays fit and firing all season for maximum success. I very much doubt Kane goes until he sees how this season goes with Jose.

 

[Gbspurs]

It was moved there because, like every other 'player watch' thread that's moved there, there was a transfer rumour about him at the time.

This joke you're on about...........it's too high brow for me I guess

Anyway, i've moved it back but if (when) there's another transfer rumour about him and it goes back into the Transfer Rumours forum pop me over the punchline when you get a minute

What's the difference between a A+C's mum and the titanic?










Only 1500 men went down on Titanic.

 

[KaribYid]

Brilliant article on Kane in the Athletic. Spoiler because it's very lengthy but well worth the read. Mods please delete if not allowed.

Spoiler: PL 60: No 33, Harry Kane

It was August 2014 and Tottenham Hotspur wanted a new striker. Danny Welbeck was on his way out of Manchester United and a season-long loan deal had been lined up. But then Olivier Giroud broke his leg against Everton and Arsenal needed a replacement. Welbeck had the choice between Champions League football with Arsenal or Europa League football with Spurs, and took the obvious decision.
If Welbeck had joined Tottenham (and by extension if Giroud hadn’t broken his leg), Harry Kane would have spent that season as their fourth-choice striker and, well… who knows how the future would have turned out for him?
As it was, Kane started the season as third choice, behind Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado, popular with the fans but still desperate to prove his worth. He was restricted to starts in the Europa League, and after a poor display away to Partizan Belgrade in September did not even make the bench for the next league game, against West Bromwich Albion — much to his dismay, leaving him seeking answers from Mauricio Pochettino.
But he kept grafting away, kept trying to prove people wrong. Later in September, he scored in a League Cup win against Nottingham Forest. On November 2, he came on and scored a last-minute free kick to beat Aston Villa, his first Premier League goal of the season. From then on, he was Spurs’ first choice.
He has never looked back.
Even now, with 188 Tottenham goals to his name, Kane is still proving a point to his doubters. He has been one of the best strikers in the Premier League over the past decade, and at 27 years old, has plenty left to give.
What makes Kane so great is that his qualities do not announce themselves in advance. He is not as fast as Thierry Henry was, as smooth as Robin van Persie, as dominant as Didier Drogba, as explosive as Sergio Aguero, as magical as Luis Suarez or as incisive as Ian Wright. And yet he is likely, on current trends, to score more than all of them and reach the top end of the Premier League goals list.
That is because the Kane story is about more than just natural ability. It is about a player with total dedication to making himself the best he can be. Some players are born great, but Kane has achieved greatness through force of will.
There were never any questions about Kane’s attitude. Even in those early days in the Tottenham academy, or when he was out on loan at four different Football League clubs from 2011-13, everyone knew he was a hard worker, an intelligent player, someone who would always apply himself on the training ground to reach the top. He had struggled for a look-in at Spurs growing up, but Tim Sherwood saw something in him and Kane scored three Premier League goals at the end of the 2013-14 season, enough to keep him in the frame that summer as Pochettino took charge.

One of the questions Kane would face in those early years was whether he was athletic enough to cut it in the top flight. Being a Premier League striker in the 2010s meant you usually needed to be able to physically dominate centre-backs or run in behind — or both, ideally. Yes, there were exceptions but the game was speeding up. And while Kane had plenty of strengths as a youngster, athleticism was not one of them. Some staff at Spurs feared he was not mobile enough, that he would not move the opposition backline around, not pull them out of shape, not take them places they did not want to go.
Although Kane had been given some early opportunities — and scored his first three Premier League goals — under Sherwood, it was the arrival of Pochettino from Southampton in May 2014 that helped propel him into becoming a top player. Pochettino’s management of Spurs was all about high-intensity football, running, pressing, overwhelming the opposition with energy. He worked the players hard, with those infamous pre-seasons, double sessions and Gacon tests (running for 45-second intervals slightly further each time).
Soon enough, Kane was fitter and quicker than ever, able to run in behind and ask defences more questions than he ever could have done before. By the time he got in the team, he came to embody those physical qualities of the Pochettino era, dominating centre-backs, ripping through defences with his movement.
The coaching staff found he had a remarkable appetite to learn and improve. The Pochettino era was founded on double sessions — the players would train twice one day per week — but Kane wanted to do more than that. So when time allowed it, there was a second double-session day, just for the strikers. Soon enough, the coaches found Kane was happy to organise that himself, rather than them having to tell him what to do.
Without a European game, the whole-squad double session was earlier in a week, which meant the strikers’ double session would be on a Thursday. Kane would lead the other attacking players — Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Son Heung-min, and later on Lucas Moura — for an extra 45 minutes, practising against three goalkeepers from the academy. In these sessions, Kane and his colleagues would focus on practising different movements, repeating runs over and over again, until they had mastered them.
Kane would work for hours on his finishing, knowing that although top-corner strikes might look better, the best path to scoring goals was the bottom corner. That is the hardest shot for the goalkeeper to save, and the most productive and reliable finish if you can master it. So for years now, he has been perfecting that strike and he is the best at it in the business. Two years into his senior Spurs career, a coach pointed out to him that he liked to cut back and shoot with his right foot. So what did he do? He worked extra-hard to master that finish with his left too.
There was plenty of time for video analysis too, often before these special strikers’ sessions, to help teach him what to do.
Kane would watch clips of Spurs’ attacking movements from previous games, breaking down what worked, what didn’t, when to attack the near post, when to hang back in the box. He would study clips of strikers from other teams, at whose movements he could try to replicate. He would scrutinize opposition goalkeepers too, to find out who rushed out and who stayed on their line. Anything he could learn to give himself an edge when he was doing it for real out on the pitch.
So what drove Kane to work this hard? What forged that mentality to spend every available minute working on every aspect of his game?
The answer lies in those difficult first years, before that explosion in 2014. When Kane was coming through at Spurs, loaned out to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City. Some young academy strikers are so good their first senior football is with their Premier League parent club — Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney, Mason Greenwood — but Kane was not like them. He always had to face those questions about whether he could cut it in the Premier League, whether he was fast enough and sharp enough to make it at the top. Even in the summer of 2014, remember, Spurs wanted to sign Welbeck rather than giving him a go.
But Kane used those doubts as a catalyst. He took inspiration from his hero Tom Brady, the former New England Patriots quarterback who overcame his doubters to become the most successful player at the position in NFL history.
Kane told me in an interview in 2017 that his favourite sports documentary was The Brady Six. It is the story of the NFL draft in 2000, when a 22-year-old Brady had to watch as 198 other players — including six other quarterbacks — were selected ahead of him.
From his high school days, Brady had faced doubts about his speed, strength and mobility. Sound familiar? But he eventually beat a more talented rival to become the starting quarterback for the University of Michigan. And when he ended up with New England, he earned his right to play ahead of the well-established Drew Bledsoe.
When the documentary was made, Brady had won three Super Bowls. Since the documentary, he has won another three, and the morning after watching his beloved Patriots win Super Bowl LI — a game where Brady led the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history having trailed 28-3 at half-time — Kane told me how important Brady’s example was to him as he worked to make himself the best player he could be.
“Tom Brady is a big inspiration and a big idol of mine,” Kane said. “The Brady Six shows how he was underestimated when he went late in the draft. But he worked hard and believed in himself and that is what I have tried to take in my career. Maybe when I was younger people didn’t always believe in me, they didn’t think I would make it to where I am now. It is about that self-belief, that self-drive, that has got me to where I am now.”
Even in the tough times, the ankle injuries, the hamstring, the ultimately failed title charges and cup final defeats, Kane has been able to fall back on that inner strength that helped to propel him through those difficult early years. But always in the knowledge that the first time he got his real chance for Spurs, he proved so many people wrong, something he has been doing ever since.
Go back through the clips of the goals from that first season and the pattern is clear.
Even right at the start, back when he was behind Adebayor and Soldado in the pecking order, Kane was finishing with the same clinical edge he shows today. Nothing showy, nothing flashy, just simple efficiency, the most effective possible route to goal. Against AEL Limassol in the Europa League, his second goal of the season, from the edge of the box, bottom corner. Against Forest in the League Cup — a transformational comeback for Pochettino in the last 20 minutes — across the goalkeeper, bottom corner. Against Besiktas in October, 20 yards, left foot, bottom corner. The first of his hat-trick against Asteras Tripolis, 25 yards out, bottom corner. (He finished that game in goal for Spurs.)
There were tap-ins and headers and penalties too, and the most important goal of all was that last-minute free kick at Villa Park, deflecting off the wall and past Brad Guzan. But Kane already had his signature finish at the age of 21. Against Newcastle United, left foot, across the keeper, bottom corner. Against Chelsea, in a 5-3 win that announced the arrival of Pochettino’s Spurs as a serious team, there were two: one where he held off challenges 25 yards out and found the bottom corner. And his second, spinning past defenders on the edge of the box and finding the bottom corner yet again.
That was on the first day of 2015, the day he was truly launched as an elite Premier League centre-forward.
The only question now, almost six years on, is how much further those inner fires will fuel him.

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Suarez more magical? Wright more incisive?

Jesse wept.

I know it’s meant as a compliment, including by whoever this sod is, but I hate the rhetoric about Kane only being where he is because he worked is arse off and is super determined, because that’s equally true of Aguero, Henry, Shearer, Van Nistelrooy, etc. You don’t get to that level without working relentlessly at your game. Messi didn’t wake up at the age of 17 one day and realise he was the best of all time, he put everything into it and made sacrifices aplenty.

But with Kane the ‘he worked hard’ thing us used as if it’s mutually exclusive from the fact that arguably only De Bruyne has a sweeter pass than him in this league, his finishes marry immense power with unflappable composure and precision accuracy, he’s explosive and bullishly strong and he’s up there with the best in the air. He can also kill a rocket of a pass with his first touch and he doesn’t have a weaker foot.

Yes, Kane obviously had to work to develop all these wonderful strings to his bow, but fact is they’re there and he’s as great to watch for his technical ability as he is for his intelligence and determination.

 

[biscuit]

Great article. Thanks for posting. If only more people understood how (relatively) small a part outright talent actually influences sportspeople. You need some, sure, but it’s determination, self-motivation, intelligence, dedication, practice that make a greater impact - among other things. I remember reading about Chris Hoy’s early days in the saddle; always trailing around at the back of the group, he was recognised in much the same way as Harry: nice guy, good work ethos, keen eye on detail, practiced the little things, was always prepared for any eventuality. Turned out well for him, and I hope Harry gets a similar amount of silverware during his career. Hopefully with us!