midoshairband
Well-Known Member
- Apr 25, 2006
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Part 2:
Tottenham’s first choice naturally was to tie Kane to a big new deal, so they offered him another one in early July, which would double Kane’s weekly wage to around £400,000.
Kane was on holiday at this point, but nothing had really changed from his perspective. His position was still that he wouldn’t be signing a new deal this window.
Meanwhile, Bayern were due to host their transfer committee meeting on July 11 and before then tested the water again. On Sunday, July 9, they contacted Tottenham and inquired about whether upping their original bid by €10million to €80million plus add-ons would shift the dial.
Tottenham were unmoved and though relations generally have been good between the clubs throughout the negotiations this summer, some at Spurs were dismayed by the story being leaked in the German press.
Spurs had a big week coming up. On Monday, July 10, new head coach Ange Postecoglou was giving his introductory press conference and, more significantly, Kane was due back for pre-season training and talks on Wednesday, July 12. Would he fail to return to pre-season training as he had done in 2021?
Kane did return to training a couple of days later and had a good meeting with Postecoglou. But his position was becoming more entrenched: he would not be signing a new contract this window.
Unless the situation changed, Levy was essentially only left with the option of selling Kane. The next day, Thursday, July 13, he met with Bayern Munich CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen for breakfast in a London hotel. No offer was made for Kane at the meeting and no price was quoted following Bayern’s initial bid for the England striker the previous month.
Bayern did not want to show their hand and instantly give the impression they were willing to pay the £120million that it was thought would convince Levy to sell.
Instead, Dreesen and Levy discussed more generally how a deal might work. Could Bayern, for instance, speak to one of its many big commercial partners and get some financial support to push the deal over the line?
It was a good-natured meeting, reflecting the positive relationship between the two clubs. Levy was said to be extremely cordial throughout the process, though Bayern wondered whether there was going to be a late sting in the tail.
Suddenly, things felt a bit more urgent. Tottenham were flying to Australia the next day, Friday, July 14, for their pre-season tour and were increasingly convinced that a resolution had to be found before they started their season away at Brentford on Sunday, August 13. This was partly because Kane had made it clear he did not want to move once the season had started.
Spurs then had effectively less than a month to complete the sale.
Were Bayern the only option though? In an ideal world for Tottenham, another club would push hard for Kane and start a bidding war.
For a variety of reasons, though, another club didn’t really enter or reenter the frame.
Barcelona were very interested and made their case, but only if Kane was willing to wait a year and join them as a free agent. Madrid were led to believe Kane would be interested in joining them, even as recently as late July. But after that initial push to try to sign him, Perez declined to pursue a deal because of Kane’s age, fee and the prospect of drawn-out negotiations. This was met with disappointment by some at the club, but it was the position Perez had warned Ancelotti he thought the club would have to take when they met on June 1.
Manchester United were clear that they, too, were not going to get lured into a battle they didn’t think they could win and turned to Atalanta’s Rasmus Hojlund instead. Even if United had pushed hard, it was felt that Kane’s preference would still be Bayern, partly as there was no guarantee Ten Hag’s side were ready to compete for the game’s biggest honours. United were also of the impression that Kane was after a prohibitive £30million-a-year salary (that’s £576,000 a week), though whether they were right is unclear.
PSG were the most viable rival to Bayern and their greater spending power made them an appealing option for Tottenham, but Kane’s unwillingness to join at the present time made it a non-starter.
Not that Bayern were helping themselves with some of their public proclamations. While Spurs were in the air travelling to Australia on Saturday, July 15, Bayern’s honorary president, Uli Hoeness, told reporters: “Kane wants to play internationally and, luckily for us, Tottenham will not be active internationally next year. He has clearly signalled in all conversations that his decision stands — and if he keeps to his word, then we’ll get him. Because then Tottenham will have to buckle because it’s not possible for such a club to do without 80, 90million, or how much it may be.”
Hoeness’ impulsive intervention — he had said he wouldn’t comment on Kane at the beginning of his impromptu interview in Bayern’s Lake Tegernsee training camp — was seen as very unhelpful and unnecessary by other board members.
It also didn’t go down well at Spurs. The “they will buckle” comment angered Levy, but it also showed him that Bayern were prepared to spend big. A source close to the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their position, felt the Tottenham boss leveraged the situation very well, extracting maximum value from Bayern’s predicament. They needed a striker and Levy knew there wasn’t really anyone comparable on the market.
On Saturday, July 22, Postecoglou was presented with a Bayern shirt with ‘Kane 9’ on the back by a Bild journalist. Postecoglou and Tottenham were seriously unimpressed with the stunt and the journalist was banned from the remaining games and press conferences of their pre-season tour. This was technically a Bild rather than a Bayern issue, but some at Tottenham felt the two entities were interchangeable and, off the back of Hoeness’ comments, there was some irritation at how the pursuit of Kane was being conducted.
It didn’t help that the transfer saga was overshadowing Spurs’ pre-season tour. A few days earlier, the first six questions of Postecoglou’s homecoming press conference in Perth had been about Kane.
It was around this time that Kane offered a firm commitment to move to Munich. His wife, Kate, travelled to the city to look at houses and health clinics. Momentum was gaining but Bayern knew that getting Levy to sit down and talk might prove difficult.
By the time of the shirt prank, Spurs had left Australia and were in Bangkok, Thailand, for a friendly against Leicester City.
It was in Bangkok that Kane sat down with Levy and other members of the Spurs hierarchy to discuss his future. Kane made it clear that he wouldn’t be signing a new contract and would like to join Bayern. It was not about money — if that was the motivation, he’d have moved to Saudi Arabia.
Levy and the other senior Spurs staff members present understood Kane’s position. Kane had made it clear on a number of occasions that a deal had to be done by the start of the season, otherwise he would be staying at the club.
Back in Germany, Bayern’s CEO Dreesen and technical director Marco Neppe stayed behind as the club flew off to Singapore for their pre-season tour. They wanted to be in Europe for face-to-face talks with Levy upon his and Spurs’ return from their tour that finished in Singapore with a game against Lion City Sailors on Wednesday, July 26.
That game included the pretty bleak sight of Kane leading out the Spurs team in front of a not-even-half-full stadium. The game, though, had been completely overshadowed by news that Joe Lewis, Tottenham’s former owner who had signed over his shares to his family trust the previous year, had been indicted for multiple inside trading charges. Levy suddenly had the Lewis imbroglio to contend with as well as the ongoing Kane saga.
Levy was scheduled to meet with Dreesen in London on Friday, July 28, but had to travel to the U.S. instead.
The meeting was pushed back, but there was optimism at Bayern. Kane’s expectation was that if there was an agreement the following week, he would say his goodbyes and potentially be in a position to get some minutes for Bayern in their friendly against Monaco on Monday, August 7.
On Monday, July 31, Dreesen and Neppe flew to London for the meeting with Levy. By the end of the discussions, the two clubs remained around £25million apart in their valuation of Kane. But after the meeting, Bayern’s executives were on the phone with Levy late into the night, which they interpreted as an indication of his desire to get the deal done. Bayern executives went away and thought about how they could find a solution to the gap in the clubs’ valuation.
On the Kane side, however, there was wariness that there would be a repeat of 2021 when the buying club, in that case City, had felt confident only for a deal not to materialise. And Kane knew the clock was ticking; the season’s start was approaching and he didn’t want to destabilise the preparations of Postecoglou, who he liked and respected.
Tottenham, meanwhile, were succession planning (as they’d been doing for the previous year in case Kane left) and laying the groundwork for a couple of attacking players to come in. It wasn’t the case that they were lining up one big-money striker to come in as a replacement for Kane.
Big-name replacements had been discussed, but there weren’t many viable options within their budget — and the lack of any European football meant marquee options like Victor Osimhen were unattainable.
Spurs did look at Evan Ferguson as a potential Kane replacement, but he recently signed a new contract that runs until 2028 and Brighton & Hove Albion have absolutely no intention of selling. Hojlund was also discussed prior to United making their move.
After looking at reports for the past year and contingency planning for Kane’s departure, the plan now is to try to share the load of the loss of his goals rather than bring in one player to replace them. They have signed 19-year-old Argentine striker Alejo Veliz from Rosario Central as a backup option to Richarlison.
Not rushing to bring in a first-choice striker now might also open the door to a move for Ivan Toney in January. This is an option being considered for when he returns and is back up to full speed after his gambling ban.
They also want to sign another wide player, such as Nottingham Forest’s Brennan Johnson, to improve their depth in the forward positions and provide cover on the wings — especially since without Kane, Son Heung-min will play more games in the centre-forward position.
With the additions already of Veliz and defender Micky van de Ven for a deal approaching £43million, sources suggest the Kane money has already been invested.
That said, it has only been in the past 10 days that all parties began believing a deal would get done. There was an increased sense at Spurs that it might actually help Postecoglou, as expectations would be lower and there would be an understanding there would have to be a period of post-Kane transition.
Bayern turned the dial up a notch as negotiations headed towards what would be the final week. A video call due for last Thursday (August 3) was cancelled and, conscious of Kane’s wish to conclude a deal before the start of the season, Bayern set a soft deadline via email of their third bid being accepted by the weekend, thought to be a strong preference rather than a demand.
Neither of these things went down well with Levy or Spurs, who thought it showed them a lack of respect, but they were being backed into a corner.
As Levy flew to America, Kane played at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in a Spurs shirt for one last time, signing off with four goals against Shakhtar Donetsk and what now will be viewed as a poignant farewell to all four sides of the ground at full time. Spurs’ sales for the game were initially expected to be around 20,000, but more than 50,000 turned up, some perhaps in expectation of seeing Kane for the final time.
Bayern’s third bid was rejected, but with valuations drawing closer, they were undeterred and almost immediately prepared to make a fourth the following Thursday (August 10).
Kane wanted clarity as the season was fast approaching and his wife, Kate, was heavily pregnant and not able to fly to Munich for much longer.
After protracted negotiations, his camp felt the move was losing momentum and if Spurs were to accept an offer after the first match of the season and Kane ended up going, it would be because he was forced out, not because he wanted to leave at that juncture.
There was also the consideration that Kane was enjoying training and playing under Postecoglou and alongside his good friend James Maddison, who he had recommended Spurs sign. If the move didn’t go through, Kane was now believed to be open to the possibility of signing a new contract further down the line if things were going well with the new head coach.
Kane’s camp cited Mohamed Salah as an example of a top player signing a new contract in the final year of their existing deal, but from Levy and Spurs’ point of view, the possibility of losing out on such a huge transfer fee was too great and they felt almost forced to take the fourth offer.
A bid worth more than €100million was accepted and the ball was now in Kane’s court.
Bayern went to work on finalising personal terms, undeterred by reports that Kane was wavering. Slow progress on Thursday caused a degree of concern at Sabener Strasse, but negotiations were at last concluded later that evening when Bayern agreed to all of the Kane camp’s demands.
Even after agreements in full, there were, incredibly, still twists in the tale, with Friday’s unforeseen delays and Kane forced to wait near Stansted before finally receiving approval to fly to Munich.
Given the characters involved and Kane’s status, it’s no surprise this was a transfer deal of endurance and patience, right to the very end.
well blow me down with a feather!
