‘They will buckle’ – the inside story of how Harry Kane left Tottenham for Bayern

The seconds ticked by like minutes, the minutes must have felt like hours. Harry Kane was holed up near Stansted Airport, waiting for the call that would change his life.

Even after a transfer fee had been agreed between Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich, even after personal terms had been finalised, the deal still wasn’t done.

Advertisement

Why? Kane didn’t know. Spurs and Bayern were still jousting. He was given no explanation other than ‘negotiations’. This was on Friday afternoon when there was still serious jeopardy as to whether the move would go ahead, to the extent that Kane was prepared to return to training with Spurs on Saturday. In Germany, Bayern officials were getting tetchy too. By early afternoon, they thought a whole summer’s work was about to fail, feeling Tottenham were moving the goalposts late on.

It was indicative of a saga that lurched from being off, to on, then off again as big personalities and egos desperately battled to ‘win’ the deal. And that was just in the last week.

Such was the paranoia involved in an incredibly complex but also sensitive deal, Friday’s delay had some people at Bayern wondering if it was all a ruse to stop Kane playing in the German Super Cup against RB Leipzig on Saturday night. Winning his first career club trophy one day after leaving Spurs? A PR disaster not even worth contemplating.

In return, the league extended the registration deadline for new players by 24 hours to 3pm on Saturday so he could feature if Bayern felt he was ready.

Kane had initially been given the green light to fly to Munich in the morning before being phoned on his way to the airport by Bayern, who said to hold on because there was a problem with the club-to-club deal and it could be embarrassing if