Harry Kane has greater control over Tottenham future than ever before

Another new era beckons at Tottenham Hotspur, and with it the sixth manager of his Spurs career for Harry Kane, although this time it feels like the club’s great player of this era has more agency over his career than in previous times.

It was Antonio Conte whom Daniel Levy appointed in Nov 2021 in part to assure his No 10 that Spurs were ambitious about finally winning a trophy. There was some of that too in the investment that followed last summer, provided by Enic’s controlling owner Joe Lewis. It was about mollifying Conte but it was also part of an uneasy pact with Kane after the summer of 2021, and that round of golf with Gary Neville that marked a change in mood.

Then Kane, with three years left on his deal, tried to soften up Levy for a possible departure. It never worked because Levy had Kane’s 2024 contract on his side, and Manchester City never delivered the kind of price that Spurs could not resist. Since then Kane’s output for goals and assists has not dimmed, he has broken Jimmy Greaves’ longstanding Spurs goalscoring record, and – most pertinently – he is just 18 months from the end of his deal.

That Kane might leave this summer, when he turns 30 in July, is a possibility. It would take a big fee for a player of his age and very few who could pay it. City already have their first choice goalscorer now in Erling Haaland. Manchester United are in the market for a striker and have spent £70 million already on a player in his fourth decade – the Brazilian Casemiro. Whether that makes them more or less likely to do so is another question, but for Kane the memory of being left high and dry by City in 2021 will have taught him not to rely on anyone.

In the summer of 2024, he can make his own decision – and current form suggests that at 31 he will still be very much in demand.

Of course, this might finally be the moment that Levy alights upon the manager who will turn around decades of near-misses or general mediocrity at Spurs. The options are quite attractive. Another former Chelsea manager in Thomas Tuchel; a bold new direction under Ange Postecoglu; the return to an old favourite in Mauricio Pochettino. The difference Kane will feel this time is that very soon his destiny will be in his own hands. No-one since Glenn Hoddle’s playing days has done more to try to transform Spurs’ fortunes, and if he walks away as a free agent next year there can be no recriminations.

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Kane may well break the England goalscoring record in the next week. He already has Spurs’ all-time record, one made all the more auspicious that it saw him surpass the greatest forward the English game has ever known.  There are three Premier League golden boots. Alan Shearer’s 260 goals in the Premier League is just about within his sights. One has to wonder just how many trophies would it take for Kane to give up some of the goals that have afforded him such status?

There is no doubt that a single trophy at Spurs would be worth more for him in posterity than, for example, another league title at Manchester City. Just as Steven Gerrard eventually made the calculation that a league title at Liverpool would be worth more than another at Chelsea. Yet do trophies really define a player’s career, especially in this age when the pre-eminence of the individual in football has never been greater?

Among those who featured on the occasions Spurs last won a trophy in 2008 were Teemu Tainio, Didier Zokora and Tony Blair’s favourite, Steed Malbranque. All fine professionals, on what turned out to be a rare day for Spurs, but just fleeting figures in the club’s long and chequered history. Kane occupies a much more prominent place in the game’s history and a giant part in the club itself. Would Kane exchange a League Cup winners’ medal for half the goals he has scored? It would feel like a better deal for Spurs than Kane.

He has tried. Conte’s successor will surely do all he can to persuade Kane to stay beyond the terms of his current contract and perhaps events will once more conspire for him to sign anew. Yet at English football’s FC Jam Tomorrow, there comes a point when even the most optimistic disposition can start to dull. For Kane it must feel like the club have tried everything, and either this summer or next he will be able to say he has done much the same.