Bayern Munich’s ‘big pants’ move for Harry Kane feels like a game-changer
To dare is to do… an approach for England’s captain believing you can extract him from Tottenham Hotspur, two years after Manchester City had failed and not long before he’ll break the Premier League scoring record.
“Totally nuts,” is how Bayern Munich honorary president Uli Hoeness dismissed the likelihood of them signing Harry Kane in a talk with the German city’s Abendzeitung newspaper in March. But by the beginning of July, Bayern had convinced themselves they could pull it off.
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“Tottenham will cave in,” Hoeness brashly announced, much to the embarrassment of his fellow club operatives.
Completing this complex mission, a much more difficult endeavour than Sadio Mane’s ill-fated transfer from Liverpool a year ago, will do wonders for the Bavarians’ self-image.
It’s a classic “dicke hose” (literal translation: big pants) move from the serial Bundesliga champions, showing off their enduring financial and sporting potency after a near-disastrous 2022-23 season (by their standards) ended in a boardroom coup.
There’s a political dimension to all of this as well.
New chief executive Jan-Christian Dreesen, Hoeness and re-activated long-term former CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge were all too happy to start this new era with the biggest possible bang, spending more than €100million (£86.4m, $110m) on a 30-year-old striker.
It’s not certain former sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic would have been entrusted to hand over that much capital, even though new chief financial officer Michael Diederich had tentatively predicted Bayern smashing through the €100million ceiling for a new striker in a club-media interview in April.
A couple of years ago, the denizens of Sabener Strasse, Bayern’s training ground, might have considered
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