Kane destined to stay another year at Spurs
➤ Covid crisis means clubs do not have the funds to make bid ➤ England captain could move before contract expires in 2024
Harry Kane looks increasingly likely to remain at Tottenham Hotspur for at least next season due to Europe’s biggest clubs having little to spend in the Covid-hit transfer market.
The England captain stated last year that he might have to leave if he did not feel Tottenham were “progressing” and has made no secret of his desire to win trophies.
Spurs are in the Carabao Cup final and the last 16 of the Europa League but have slipped to ninth in the Premier League after a run of five defeats in six games that has placed their chances of qualifying for Europe in danger and cast doubt over the future of head coach Jose Mourinho.
Spurs have never discussed a fee that they would accept for Kane and insist they want him to stay. However, they are also aware that he will, eventually, become a “depreciating” asset as his contract runs down and that the striker is desperate to win trophies. Kane’s contract is due to expire in 2024. It is highly unlikely that any offer in the next window will be big enough to tempt Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman, into selling.
The effects of the pandemic will have deep repercussions for clubs who spent heavily last summer in the expectation that fans would have returned by now.
At the same time, Barcelona and Real Madrid have further financial problems, while Paris St-german, another possible suitor, are concentrating on trying to renew the contracts of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
A battleground is emerging for Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland, which, sources claim, is due to involve Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea but – at 20 – the Norwegian forward is seven years younger than Kane and would cost considerably less. Matters could also be complicated if Mourinho fails to arrest the club’s slide and does not secure European football. Spurs would put RB Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann top of their list of targets if Mourinho is to be replaced.
He was the youngest chairman in the Premier League when he took control of one of its biggest underachievers 20 years ago tomorrow, and the success or otherwise of the Daniel Levy era at Tottenham Hotspur remains a subject of dispute to this day.
Spurs were 12th after defeat by Leeds United on Feb 24, 2001, four days after which Enic, the investment company partly owned by Levy, bought a controlling stake and he became non-executive chairman, aged 39. Those close to him said he never wanted to be chairman or go through the kind of public row between his predecessor, David Buchler, and then manager George Graham which exploded in the months that followed.
Graham was sacked having been accused by Buchler of leaking sensitive information about the club’s finances. Then in July 2001, the club captain, Sol Campbell, allowed to run down his contract by the previous regime, signed for Arsenal as a free agent in one of the biggest embarrassments in Spurs’ history. By mid-october, Levy was executive chairman.
In the recent Amazon Prime documentary about the club, in which Levy spoke candidly for the first time in years, he reflected that he had run many businesses in his life. “A football club,” he concluded, “is the hardest I’ve run.”
Two decades on, the club are at another crossroads this summer. The heady days of the Mauricio Pochettino era are over. His successor, Jose Mourinho, has overseen a place in a League Cup final few believe Spurs can win and progress in the Europa League, but five defeats in six in the league. Questions over the future of Harry Kane, the club’s top scorer for six seasons, will not go away. With three years left on his contract, and turning 28 in July, is this the moment Levy sells? Even if he wished to, the question is whether a market exists for £100million players. That kind of fee would be useful for a club who had only just built their £1billion stadium when Covid-19 struck.
The ultimate owner of Enic is the Tavistock Group, based in the Bahamas, and the huge investment portfolio built by the English billionaire tax exile Joe Lewis. Its investments include private golf clubs in the US, steak house restaurant chains, Florida medical research facilities, San Diego biotechnology investors and an Argentine energy company among others. Spurs are a relatively small part, but almost all the public profile of Levy and Lewis springs from their Premier League club.
Levy is the longest-serving senior club executive in the league by some distance, but there is always the whiff of tumult at Spurs, the recent churn in senior staff being the latest. At the start of the pandemic last year, Levy very quickly went public, encouraging players to give up part of their salaries and furloughing staff. Both were rowed back on in the following weeks.
Spurs have transformed their stadium and their standing under Levy. They have enjoyed memorable moments, especially in Europe, but won only one trophy. They have fallen just short at times. Like many in the league, they despair privately at the power of billionaire owners. Yet Spurs are owned by a billionaire.
Lewis was never prepared to inject cash. Instead, Levy’s plan in 2001 was to be self-sustaining, first improving a team who twice finished 15th in the 1990s, and then building the training ground and stadium. Allies say he has completed the two latter projects to the highest spec and it is the on-pitch performance – the part that is hardest to control – that has been the most unpredictable. The club, one source said, were crying out for change in 2001 – run like a “cottage industry” with no centralised marketing strategy and separate departments doing the best they could.
Twenty years on from being the young exec thrust into football, Levy’s reputation precedes him. He likes to control every part of a player’s deal, down to the kind of details over incremental pay rises that would ordinarily be left to others to finalise. His famed style of negotiation can be a shock to inexperienced agents doing their first big deal.
For the older generation of agents and peers running other clubs, his demanding opening gambits generally raise a chuckle. “He stabs you in the chest rather than the back,” is one assessment. Levy can be exhausting, but the notion that he triumphs in every negotiation is generally regarded as a myth.
By now, Levy would have hoped to be overseeing a club competing to be London’s leading sports and entertainment venue. The new stadium was built to accommodate NFL and concerts as well as elite football. Instead the gates remain closed on the great glass and steel vision on Tottenham High Road. There are still no title sponsor naming rights, and yet another new executive – this one from the US – has been recruited to sell them.
Lewis is 84 and he will decide the ultimate fate of Spurs. He has a daughter and son who work with Tavistock Group. Levy’s son Josh is chief executive of another Tavistock company, Ultimate Finance. Enic once owned minority stakes in five other European clubs, including Rangers, in the Scottish Premiership but it was Spurs that caught Levy’s imagination.
The Levy of 20 years ago would have seen potential in the club as an investment, although perhaps he would not have imagined it would occupy so much of his professional life. One suspects the diligent, publicity-shy Cambridge graduate has come to enjoy the power and profile which came with football. His career has made him wealthy, as one of the best paid executives in the top flight, although perhaps that is no longer enough.