Harry Kane is the talk of the town after becoming Tottenham’s all time leading goal-scorer, and also joining Alan Shearer and Wayne Rooney as the only players to hit 200 Premier League goals.
Kane is now surely increasingly confident of eventually overtaking Shearer, who is in first place with 260 goals in the top flight, but the question remains – will he be doing this in a Spurs shirt, or will he also look at filling that empty trophy cabinet as well as chasing individual records before his career is done?
As recently discussed by Ben Jacobs in his exclusive CaughtOffside column, it’s not easy to work out where Kane could move to next, with Manchester United and Chelsea possibly in the mix, but Manchester City now surely out of the equation after signing both Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez.
The problem for United and Chelsea is that Tottenham chief Daniel Levy is surely going to do everything in his power to prevent the England international joining a Premier League rival, just as he did when Man City were chasing him.
As Jacobs explained, Man City “were basically talking to a brick wall” as there was no intention from Spurs to even negotiate, with even Kane surprised that his asking price was as high as £200million, with no sign of any budging from his club.
One possible advantage for Man Utd and Chelsea now is that Kane is a little closer to the end of his THFC contract, which expires in 2024, but even then it’s hard to imagine this will be at all easy to get done unless the player really pushes for a move.
This perhaps seems unlikely, however, as Jacobs notes that Kane never threw his toys out of the pram when City came calling, and he’s now probably even less likely to try to leave as he’s settled where he is, and happy with the project of Antonio Conte.
And unlike City, United and Chelsea do not offer that same stability or guaranteed success. These two teams undoubtedly need Kane more than he needs them, and the 29-year-old might not be so unwise in thinking that if he sticks it out with Tottenham, he might be in a stronger position to win trophies with his current side than with either of those teams.
Move abroad not nailed on for Kane
So what about a move to another league? Tottenham would surely prefer to offload Kane to one of Europe’s giants if it means avoiding seeing him play for a rival, but this is seemingly one that wouldn’t appeal to the player that much.
Kane has made it pretty clear that he has an eye on Shearer’s Premier League scoring record, so that would be out of the window if he moved abroad, and Jacobs recently noted that he doesn’t really look like a priority for clubs like Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, nor would he be that affordable for them either.
“We know there’s been a historical interest from Bayern Munich, but I’ve been told pretty consistently that Kane isn’t sold on going to Germany,” Jacobs wrote.
“People tend to put two and two together because Bayern, more often than not, will finish the season with something in their trophy cabinet, and of course he’d have Champions League football.
“However, there are two issues – the transfer fee is difficult for Bayern, and Kane himself doesn’t necessarily want to leave the Premier League, where he feels settled.”
On Real Madrid, he added: “Real Madrid have been linked with Kane as well, but again they’re not going to pay the kind of transfer fee that’s been quoted for Kane. It’s no longer £200m but it’s still in excess of £100m for someone approaching their 30s, and I don’t think Real Madrid see any value in that.
“We’ll see what happens over the course of the summer, clubs tend to spin multiple plates because they don’t know which races they’re going to win and which ones they’re going to lose, but it’s important to stress that Real Madrid’s priority is Jude Bellingham. If they can only spend £100-plus-million on one player, their priority would be Bellingham over Kane.
“I think Kane’s transfer fee is very likely to put Real Madrid off.”
So who does that leave? Serie A seems like a non-starter for a variety of reasons, and Paris Saint-Germain already have Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi.
Would staying at Spurs be so bad?
Kane would be taking a gamble if he committed to Spurs – they haven’t won a trophy since 2008, they’re not always in the Champions League, and from the outside it can appear as though they don’t have a 100% committed manager.
Still, it’s an ambitious club, with a great new stadium, and the appeal of the Premier League and of living in London can’t be underestimated. Some might scoff at this as a lack of ambition from Kane, but footballers are human and there can be all kinds of different motivations for what they choose to do.
Even from a purely footballing perspective, it would be admirable of Kane to stay with the club he’s been at for his whole career, and to continue to make history for them – after all, if he’s scoring bucketloads of goals, that gives them every chance of finally ending that trophy drought.
And while he might look at someone like Gareth Bale, who left Tottenham to win five Champions League titles, he might feel he’d look back at his career with more pride at being the greatest goal-scorer in Premier League history.
And why not? Is it really a bigger achievement to pick up a Champions League winners’ medal after being an unused sub in the final, as Bale did last season? There are many inferior players to Kane who have been in Premier League, Champions League and World Cup-winning squads without contributing a great deal. Not many players get to say they were the all-time top scorer in their country’s top division.