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Why Harry Kane’s happiness threatens to become Tottenham’s elephant in the room
It is nearly a year since Harry Kane warned that he would not stay at Tottenham “for the sake of it”, and those comments make uneasy reading for the club in their current state.
“I love Spurs, I’ll always love Spurs, but I’ve always said if I don’t feel we’re progressing as a team or going in the right direction, I’m not someone to stay there for the sake of it,” Kane told Jamie Redknapp in an Instagram Live chat in March 2020.
Right now, it is hard to make a case that Spurs are progressing — short-term, they have been on the slide since mid-December, but their downturn in the League began more than two years ago — and the question of Kane’s happiness is threatening to become the elephant in the room if Jose Mourinho’s side cannot stop the rot.
Kane has always made plain his desire to win the major team honours his talent deserves and now feels like the time to do it, with the 27-year-old in his prime.
“I don’t think there’s a day that goes past when I don’t wake up and think, ‘I want to win the Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup’,” Kane told Thierry Henry in an interview in 2017. “In three years’ time, if I haven’t won a trophy, it’d be disappointing.”
Tottenham, though, still look some way short of challenging for the biggest honours and another period of rebuilding appears to lie ahead.
Mourinho last week reminded Kane that Spurs are only one match — the Carabao Cup Final against Manchester City in April — from winning a trophy, while the Europa League, which resumes tomorrow with the round-of-32 first leg against Wolfsberger, offers another credible route to silverware this season.
The question for Kane is whether challenging on those fronts is enough and former Spurs striker Dimitar Berbatov, who forced his way out of the club to win two League titles at Manchester United, believes time is running out for the England captain to win the top honours.
“When he stops playing, is he going to be happy with no winners’ medals?” questioned Berbatov in an interview with Standard Sport. “Time doesn’t wait for anyone.”
Kane is also motivated by personal accolades, which are all but guaranteed with Spurs. His goal against Everton last week moved him above Bobby Smith as the club’s second-highest scorer of all-time on 209 and he is just 57 short of Jimmy Greaves’ record of 266.
“From a striker’s point of view, these records are important and he will want to be number one,” Berbatov said. “It would be a great honour for him to be the all-time top scorer for Spurs and this will be something that is on his mind. There will always be the question about if he is staying or going. He knows he is the one who will score goals in that side. He’s in a great place at Spurs. The only minor setback is the lack of trophies.”
Kane has also spoken fondly of wanting to be a “one-club man” and former Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino claimed the forward was “so emotional” while watching Francesco Totti’s tearful goodbye to Roma in 2017, bringing down the curtain on a glorious 25-year career with the Italian club.
Trophies or not, Kane is on course to write himself into Spurs folklore in similar style and even leading them to the League Cup would feel hugely significant given his story and the club’s long wait for silverware.
Whether through Mourinho’s management or his own insatiable desire for self-improvement, Kane has gone up a level this season, establishing himself as not only Spurs’s focal point but their beating heart, too.
Even before the financial devastation caused by the pandemic, there were few clubs with the resources to prize Kane from north London, while his importance to Spurs as a talisman and symbol transcends his role in the team, making him near-enough priceless.
“We are in a unique situation in football, but at the end of the day if a player wants to leave and he expresses his feelings to the manager and the chairman, I would expect them to find a way to make business happen,” added Berbatov, a Betfair ambassador.
Mourinho last week brushed aside a question about the importance of winning the League Cup and Europa League to his talisman’s future, saying only: “You have to ask Harry”, but Kane’s situation has undoubtedly added an extra edge to the competitions.
Kane’s happiness or otherwise is understandably an uncomfortable subject for Spurs and their fans, but it may be one that needs to be confronted soon.
For more from Betfair Ambassador, Dimitar Berbatov head to https://betting.betfair.com/football/dimitar-berbatov/.
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