Harry Kane is caught between a rock and a hard place, with the deadlines set for his move to Bayern Munich in danger of expiring in the coming days, making it ever more likely that he will start the season with Tottenham at Brentford next Sunday.
That would of course mean he could leave on a free next summer but Kane has set his own guillotine on his prospective €100million move to Bayern Munich, wanting it sorted by the opening match of the season. If it isn’t, he will stay at Spurs, though there is no current prospect of him signing a new deal with the club.
Bayern submitted their final £86m bid on Friday, requesting a quick resolution, to which Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has responded by flying to the USA.
All of which points to Bayern abandoning their attempts to sign Kane next week and looking elsewhere, with Juventus’s Dusan Vlahovic the next target on their list.
The impasse has come as old-fashioned German common sense about the value of a player with just one year left on his contract has collided with the reality of Levy’s negotiating style.
Harry Kane could stay at Tottenham with his potential move to Bayern set to fall through
Daniel Levy responded to Bayern’s £86million offer for Kane by flying out to the United States
Spurs will hope that progress under new manager Ange Postecoglou might persuade Kane to sign a contract extension with a release clause before he can leave on a free next summer.
And despite the risk of allowing him to depart on a free, Spurs have much more chance of qualifying for Champions League football next season with Kane than without him — thereby adding £100m to their revenues in 2024-25.
Levy ignoring Bayern is a classic touch of one-upmanship in the protracted negotiations. But Bayern are not a club who enjoy a last-minute deadline-day deal, nor will they pay £100m.
The feeling in Bavaria will be that that they have done all they reasonably can to comply with coach Thomas Tuchel’s wish to sign Kane. The player and his family were open to the move and happy to switch their life to Munich.
Yet even Tuchel will have to accept there is a financial limit despite their real need of a world-class centre-forward. Tuchel will have to set his sights on the likes of Vlahovic. France’s Randal Kolo Muani, also mentioned as a target, is likely to join Paris Saint-Germain from Eintracht Frankfurt.
There will be pressure on new Bayern sporting director Christoph Freund to find a solution given that the club were criticised in Germany for failing to persuade Erling Haaland to consider Bayern, when he opted to join Manchester City. Freund has been asked to revamp recruitment and Kane would have been a huge boost to the club.
Bayern have brought in Napoli’s Serie A title winner and centre-half Kim Min-jae for £45m but their main need is to replace Robert Lewandowski, who left last summer, at centre-forward.
