Harry Kane, Spurs’ goal machine
When Spurs striker Harry Kane recently scored his 100th Premier League goal he joined an elite group of superstars
HE WAS just eight years old when his father delivered the heart-breaking news. The talented youngster, whose only dream was to play soccer, was well on his way to realising his goal after nabbing a coveted spot in Arsenal’s youth programme.
But after just one season as a little Gunner, Harry Kane was taken for a walk in the park by his dad. “I have to tell you something,” Patrick Kane blurted out, putting his arm around his little boy’s shoulder. “Arsenal have released you.”
Looking back, Kane (24) can’t quite recall what he felt in that moment. “I don’t even think I really knew what it meant. I was too young,” he wrote in a column for The Players’ Tribune, a media platform for content written by professional sportspeople.
“But I do remember how my father reacted and how it made me feel. He didn’t criticise me. He didn’t criticise Arsenal. He just said, ‘Don’t worry, Harry. We’ll work harder – and we’ll go on and we’ll find another club, all right?’ ”
And they did. After a stint at Watford, 11-year-old Harry was accepted into the Tottenham Hotspur youth programme – and he’s been there since.
“Looking back on it now, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says of Arsenal’s rejection. “It gave me a drive that wasn’t there before.”
And the skilled striker’s drive is the gift that keeps on giving to Spurs. In a recent 2-2 draw at Liverpool, Kane sent his 100th ball into the back of the net in a Premier League match – one of only 26 players in the league’s history to do so.
At the time of going to print the 1,8m tall star had scored 35 goals in 36 games for club and country this season, including three spectacular hat-tricks. Right now he’s even ahead of the likes of the formidable Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar.
The incredible milestone has footballers and fans singing his praises – even, Kane must be chuffed to note, Arsenal’s coach, Arsène Wenger. Asked if there was a better striker in Europe than Kane at the moment, Wenger said, “If you look at the
numbers, then no. I can talk and talk but it’s the numbers that will show that. The best way to defend is to have the numbers and take the game to them.”
HE MAY be Spurs’ golden boy now but it hasn’t always been that way. Far from it, in fact. After working his way up the ranks at White Hart Lane, Kane finally found himself in the Spurs first team in the 2009-’10 season. Well, only twice, to be exact. And both times he was on the bench.
While he might not have been starting material just yet, the Spurs coach at the time, Harry Redknapp, saw something in the 17-year-old and offered him his first contract.
But unfortunately for Kane, his initial years at the London-based side were probably not quite what he’d expected. In fact, from 2010 until 2013 he was barely in London, out on loan to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City.
When he finally returned to Spurs in the summer of 2013 he’d had enough.
“[Then-coach] André Villas-Boas wanted to send me out on loan again,” Kane recalls. “So I told him quite honestly, ‘I don’t want to go.’ He just kind of looked at me, a bit confused.
“Then I just came out with it. I said, ‘I’m going to prove to you I should be starting on this team. And you can tell me every Friday before the game that I don’t deserve that and that I’m not going to play. And that’s fine. But I don’t want to go’.”
The heartfelt speech did the trick and Villas-Boas kept him at White Hart Lane – but Kane’s situation didn’t improve. He played a measly 13 Premier League minutes under Villas-Boas before the Portuguese manager was axed and Brit Tim Sherwood stepped into his shoes.
After Sherwood came Mauricio Pochettino – and Kane still hadn’t been given much playing time. In fact when Pochettino arrived on the scene in 2014, it was still quite possible that only Spurs fans would ever have heard of Kane, according to The Independent’s chief sports writer Jonathan Liew.
“He was of average height and average build. He looked like an ordinary bloke off the street. But over time what was inside gradually began to show on the outside.”
Refusing to give up on a starting spot, Kane worked “with religious devotion” on his leg and core strength. He spent hours with a dedicated sprint coach to improve his straight-line speed. He eradicated the bias his coaches noticed he’d developed for his left side.
“Little by little Kane was equipping himself with the tools needed to play as a lone striker in one of the most physical leagues in Europe,” Liew writes.
As this season’s numbers show, Kane’s dogged devotion has paid off. As Liew writes, he’s a reminder that great players are made, not born. “Kane’s unique combination of pedigree and potential could yet turn him into one of the great strikers, not just of the Premier League era but of English football.”
NOW the question on soccer fans’ lips is whether “The Hurrikane” will stay at his boyhood club. Especially because, despite his on-field heroism, he’s yet to win any silverware with fifth-placed Tottenham.
Unsurprisingly, the big names have come knocking, with Kane being linked to Spanish powerhouse Real Madrid in the latest bout of transfer gossip – and critics think he’d be a fool to pass up an opportunity like that.
“I ’ m aware I’ll be upsetting some fans,” Scottish TV soccer pundi t and former player Graeme Souness wrote in his column for the UK’s Sunday Times. “But being impartial I believe Harry Kane should leave for Real Madrid this summer if he gets the chance.”
Kane is signed with Spurs until 2022 but former England teammate Wayne Rooney believes he should have a long, hard think if the side doesn’t start winning trophies.
“At the moment he’s probably the best striker in Europe,” fellow 100-clubber Rooney told Sky Sports. “He can go where he wants to, he’s that good.”
Even Pochettino is hesitant to say Kane is going to stay put. “That’s a question for him, not me,” the Argentinian said, adding, “He’s so happy here and he loves Tottenham but this is a personal question. I can’t answer for him.”
Of course there’s more to it than trophies – Souness reckons if Kane does move he could become the first £ 200- million ( R3,4-billion) player.
That would make him the most expensive player of all time, ahead of Paris-Saint Germain’s Neymar, whom the French side bought from Barcelona in 2017 for a record £198 million (then R3,2 billion).
Sure, a move to a side such as Real might make Kane a part of a Champion’s League-winning side, net him a few Ballon d’Or trophies and make him one of the richest men in England. But is that what he’s in it for? A sentence at the end of his Players’ Tribune column is telling.
“Now I close my eyes and picture myself lifting the Premier League trophy at our new stadium with my mates,” he wrote. “I’d trade the next 100 goals for that feeling.”
He’s a reminder that great players are made, not born