Spurs shouldn’t put cash before Kane’s England dream
Petty politics scuppers GB
Australia. that’s the problem. in any other circumstances, tottenham Hotspur’s fears over Harry Kane and burnout might deserve consideration. While his club insists on dragging Kane to a land down under, however, sympathy will be in short supply.
it’s not about this summer, tottenham argue. it’s about the next. if Kane goes to the European under 21 Championship from June 17 to 30, then plays a full Premier league season and travels to the European Championship with the senior squad in 2016 until July, then reports back to tottenham for the next Premier league campaign… well, you get the idea.
it would be close to three years with barely a break. From the build-up to this campaign beginning July 2014 to the end of season 2016-17 without a summer off. and he’s only 21. Yet even so: australia. that’s where the argument falls down.
On May 30, tottenham will play sydney FC in the aNZ stadium. the Premier league season will have been over six days, the Fa Cup final will kick off later that afternoon, so it isn’t a fixture that has been in the calendar, long-term.
until being removed from the Fa Cup by leicester on January 24, tottenham potentially had an important commitment at Wembley that day. Only when Jeffrey schlupp’s winner went in with close to the last kick of the game did they suddenly become free on that date, by which time it had long been known England would be at the European under 21 Championship finals in the Czech republic in June. the draw took place in Prague on November 6.
so, tottenham understood when they began making plans for a friendly in sydney that Kane had tournament commitments and fixtures scheduled for June 18, 21 and 24, at least. they would even have had an inkling that his form this season was so exceptional he would probably be banging on the door of the senior team, too.
Yet still his image was used to promote a competitively insignificant friendly game across the other side of the world.
England are already making sensible compromises around Kane. roy Hodgson has ruled him out of senior international fixtures with the republic of ireland and slovenia in June. He wants Kane to prioritise the under 21 team, and rightly so. Yet where is tottenham’s concession? it isn’t in letting Kane go with the under 21s. a genuine compromise would be to not drag him 21 hours across the planet and back for a game that has no relevance beyond commerce.
Kane’s manager, Mauricio Pochettino, knows the toll of a trip to australia. Earlier this month he ruled out a long-haul pre-season tour.
‘it is never proper for a team to go to asia or america at the start of the season,’ Pochettino said. ‘ the first period of pre-season is very important to set our style and the basis of the team. the aim is to combine the business responsibilities of the club with the sporting needs.’ He added that daniel levy, the chairman, supported this view.
so, tottenham are compromising, but within their organisation. Pochettino has probably been persuaded that the australian expedition makes no difference to his sporting needs, as the season is finished anyway.
Yet it isn’t over for Kane. He still has several laps to go and, as he made plain last week, his commitment to England’s under 21 team and belief in treating football at that level seriously is strong.
if rest is the issue, Kane could put his feet up from Monday, May 25 to Wednesday, June 10, a week before England’s first under 21 match against Portugal — a whole 17 days’ rest. But it would mean not travelling to australia.
When country priorities are advanced there is a standard howl that the club pays a player’s wages and must come first, but not this time when the club priority is its cash register.
‘He’s one of our own,’ they sing at tottenham, but even when young Harry was still undecided about his club allegiance, his nationality was not in doubt. He is England’s too — and on this occasion England should have first call.
WELL, the tiny minds won. Great Britain will not be represented in the Olympic football tournament, even if England succeed in qualifying through this summer’s European Under 21 Championship. FIFA will not sanction England’s presence — competing as Great Britain — without agreement from the other three home nations. And the home nations will not grant England’s passage because they see it as the thin end of the wedge. If Great Britain can enter the Olympics, how long before we are forced to qualify for the World Cup as a single entity or lose the status of independent nations within FIFA? Yet a general understanding that if any of the four home nations were strong enough to qualify for the Olympics they could compete beneath the umbrella of Great Britain does not seem such a horrid arrangement. After all, this basic principle works in other sports such as hockey and curling. Perhaps Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales fear their Under 21 teams will never reach the required standard, so the agreement would only benefit England — but then whose fault is that? The FA messed up by not announcing their plans earlier, but the real problem is that, for European qualifiers, men’s Olympic football is a horrible mish-mash, an Under 23 tournament entered through an Under 21 tournament, which falls at the start of the major league seasons with no mandatory agreement on player release. This makes it barely worth the trouble, which is a pity. If England do qualify this summer, those players have earned the right to compete for Olympic gold, only to be denied by small-time politics, and small-time politicians.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter claims that holding the World Cup in Russia will stabilise the region. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the outrage that has provoked some to call for a boycott in 2018 — came three days after the conclusion of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Proof that international sports events merely serve to legitimise corrupt host regimes, rather than soften them. Still, as far as FIFA and Russia are concerned, it takes one to know one. CHELSEA fought back from three goals down against Tottenham Hotspur last week to reach the FA Youth Cup final for the fourth consecutive time. No doubt Vitesse Arnhem, the traditional beneficiaries of Chelsea’s youth system, will be delighted.