Harry Kane: Trophies, trailblazer and Tuchel? Or Spurs, Shearer, Son and settling down?
Harry Kane could stay at Spurs to break the Premier League goals record, or uproot his entire family to join Bayern Munich and win some hollow trophies…
The summer’s most tedious transfer saga looks to be heading in one of just two directions: Harry Kane will either stay in the safety net of Spurs; or take a leap of faith and move to Bayern Munich.
A bit like the player himself, the saga hasn’t had that big-time feel to it, instead being devoid of any real drama outside of Joe Lewis potentially exposing himself as the latest problematic owner of a Premier League club.
But does he even own the club now? Whoever does, it appears Daniel Levy will be forced to sell his star asset this summer unless a new contract is signed out of nowhere, which would make even less sense for Kane than the six-year deal he signed in 2018.
With Manchester United seemingly ruling themselves out with the purchase of Rasmus Hojlund and an unwillingness to do business with Levy (and vice versa), a move to the Bundesliga is suddenly the England captain’s only escape route from purgatory at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Lots of goals but nothing to show for it, and not even a challenge for trophies of late, has been the story of Kane at club level.
READ MORE: Man City’s £160m move and enraging Spurs: the ten worst attempts at forcing Levy into selling Kane
Of course, if he joins Bayern, it would be the reverse with a guarantee of silverware, the Bavarian giants having just claimed their 11th Bundesliga title in a row after Borussia Dortmund blew up on the last day of the season. A few DFB-Pokals would also surely follow, and yearly tilts at the Champions League, a competition Kane just hasn’t played enough knock-out games in.
It is one of the many pros to the move, along with basic positive of trying something completely new. Kane has spent his entire career in England, from the Spurs academy and a series of loans to the star of the first team.
He’s lived and played in north London for almost of all his life and career, so he must be curious to experience something else. Unless he fancies uprooting his family to Saudi Arabia, Germany seems like a decent culture shift.
He’d be playing under a world-class manager in Thomas Tuchel and with fellow top-class players, something which has been a rarity of late with Spurs outside of his tandem with Heung-min Son.
It would also ensure he doesn’t upset any Spurs fans by moving to a Premier League rival (let’s forget his 2021 push for a move to Manchester City because everyone else seemingly has), and he wouldn’t have to play against them outside of potential European clashes. A win-win for player, fans and club.
A move to Bayern could also be beneficial to his international career, with the Bundesliga schedule, particularly for Bayern, lighter than the weekly slog of the Premier League. Throw in a winter break and Gareth Southgate’s eyes must be lighting up. The Euros next summer is in Germany, where better for Kane to prepare?
As mentioned, while the saga has been rather boring, a switch for England’s captain to Germany’s biggest club would certainly not be. Other English greats have gone to Barcelona and Real Madrid before and some have switched to Serie A, but who in their prime has moved to the Bundesliga since Kevin Keegan?
Jude Bellingham and Jadon Sancho made the move as teenagers with great success, while Bayern have only ever had two English players in their history: the Canadian-Bavarian-Northerner Owen Hargreaves and the lesser-known Omar Richards, now of Nottingham Forest.
Harry Kane: the trailblazer. Not bad.
How about Oktoberfest? Just imagine Kane in the lederhosen with jugs of beer. Iconic.
Of course, for all those pros, there are cons.
Trying out a new experience and a new way of life is admirable but what if he doesn’t like it? Or, more importantly, his family. Kane and his wife have three kids with a fourth on the way, and a move from London to Bavaria could be disruptive for all. Michael Owen has spoken before of how he and his family struggled to settle in Madrid – granted they were stuck in a hotel for the bulk of a year.
He would have to learn a new language, which while being a good challenge, is another barrier. But the idea of Kane saying “ich bin Harry” on a Duolingo German exercise is quite humorous.
Onto more serious issues and that of his legacy as a player. As noted, domestic success would be a given with Bayern, as would consistent knock-out appearances in the Champions League but he’d have to win in Europe for the move to be deemed an undisputed success, for both player and club.
Bayern win league titles with Eric Choupo-Moting up top; they aren’t parting ways with £100m for anything but a seventh European crown, and Kane would need to prove to be the match of Robert Lewandowski and others before in doing that.
Not all league titles are made equal, and multiple Bundesliga titles alone would never equate to one Premier League crown for Kane, which is another possible downside to the move.
Kane would almost certainly be ruling himself out of ever winning the English title, putting himself alongside Steven Gerrard as the best to never win it in the post-1992 era.
The much-fabled but rather laughable Premier League goals record would also escape his clutches in all likelihood (barring a move back), with Kane currently 49 shy of Alan Shearer’s long-held tally.
Maybe Kane has realised the true top-flight record belongs to fellow Spurs great and the man he overtook as the club’s all-time top scorer in February, Jimmy Greaves, who netted 357 goals in his career in the then-Division One. For those in doubt, that is the same league just with different branding and trophy.
READ MORE: Jimmy Greaves might actually be one of the greatest ever…
These pros and cons, and many more that may be known only to the player and those closest to him, are no doubt being weighed up when deciding on what to do next.
Kane has done all he can do at Tottenham outside of a trophy. It’s now time to stick or twist. The biggest decision of his career is set to take place.
