After weeks of negotiations, are Bayern finally willing to match Spurs’ asking price for Harry Kane?
Tottenham Hotspur are still in negotiations with Bayern Munich over Harry Kane, with the Bundesliga champions now confirming “their intention to go over €80m” to sign the striker, per transfers expert Fabrizio Romano.
Is Harry Kane leaving Tottenham Hotspur this summer?
It’s the transfer saga that keeps rolling on this summer, as despite the remonstrations from Daniel Levy and Co that all-time leading goalscorer Kane is not for sale for anything less than £100m, Bayern keep coming back to test their resolve.
The Bavarians have already had two offers rebuffed by the north Londoners, with the second being worth an estimated €80m (£69m), but seem as stubborn as ever.
The two sides met for in-person talks this week, and despite the gap in valuation remaining, it sounds as if some small progress has been made, with the Germans realising that they will have to up their offers significantly should they want to complete this signing.
With that in mind, the six-time European champions have now confirmed that they intend to make a bid in excess of their previous €80m offer. However, even this is likely to be deemed insufficient by Tottenham, per transfers expert Fabrizio Romano.
“At the moment still no agreement between Bayern and Tottenham for Harry Kane. Bayern have confirmed their intention to go over €80m for Harry Kane, but it’s still not enough to convince Daniel Levy.
“So what happens now? The negotiations continue, the negotiations are still ongoing. Harry Kane confirmed that he’s open to joining Bayern but it depends, as always, on Daniel Levy.”
How good was Harry Kane last season?
It’s a bit of a strange one because in any other Premier League season, bar perhaps 2013/14 when Luis Suarez scored a mind-blowingly good 31 goals in 33 games, Kane would be getting so much more attention for his performances and probably getting held up as the best in the division.
Unfortunately for the England captain, Manchester City have a certain record-breaking Norwegian among their ranks who has somewhat overshadowed the performances of the Walthamstow-born machine.
That said, Kane was absolutely magnificent last year, somehow finding another level to his game, even as the team around him did their best to fall apart on a seemingly weekly basis.
In his 38 league appearances for the Lilywhites, he scored 30 goals, provided three assists, won eight Man-of-the-Match awards and averaged a seriously impressive match rating of 7.51, per WhoScored.
His underlying numbers, unsurprisingly, are also outstanding and suggest that were he to join a team as dominant as Bayern Munich, he could well break the goalscoring records set by Robert Lewandowski only a couple of seasons ago.
According to FBref, which compares players across Europe’s top five leagues, the 30-year-old “monster” sits in the top 4% for progressive passes, the top 10% for shot-creating actions, the top 14% for non-penalty goals, the top 16% for expected assists, and the top 20% for total shots, all per 90.
His performances have drawn praise from one of the all-time great managers as well, Pep Guardiola, who heaped praise on him earlier this year, saying:
“What an exceptional player – the numbers and, more than the goals, the quality. That they didn’t win a title (doesn’t mean) he is not a good player. I think he proved that.
“Harry Kane remains one of the best strikers I have ever seen in my life.”
Ultimately, if Bayern are serious about signing a talent as rare as Kane, then the £100m odd that Levy is holding out for doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.
