Harry Kane won’t leave Tottenham as long as Spurs continue to improve

People keep asking Harry Kane about his future. That’s fine, and is expected. It’s not every day that a player comes up through a Premier League academy at a club like Tottenham Hotspur and isn’t eventually sold to a mega-rich club. He’s a world-class talent that seems content to stay at his home-grown club that’s just a tad below the best clubs in the league. Just like Francesco Totti, Harry Kane’s career seems to buck convention.

This time, however, Kane was asked about his future and gave a little more detail about what it will take to keep him in north London. And basically, it comes down to winning things.

“I’ve always said: keep progressing, keep getting better, we want to start winning trophies. That’s the aim, as long as the club keep doing that then, yeah I’m happy here.”

This is pretty much exactly what Mauricio Pochettino said about Kane when he was asked in a press conference after Spurs’ FA Cup win over Wimbledon. The words were different, but the gist was the same — Harry Kane is happy at Spurs and would like nothing less than to stay at Tottenham, but he’s also super ambitious and wants his club to match his ambition.

Both Kane and Pochettino have been asked about Harry’s future specifically, but often couched in the more general terms of player power with regard to their playing futures. Sneakily, this comes in the form of asking him about Philippe Coutinho’s blockbuster transfer from Liverpool to Barcelona. Kane’s reply is both unsurprising, but also more detail than what we’ve heard from him before.

“From the Coutinho point of view I think he’s been very professional in the six months he has played this year and, look, Liverpool have got a good offer from Barca and accepted it, so I wouldn’t say they’re powerless. But I can see why if a player wants to go you would let him go.

“If a player wants to go then why would you stop him? He’s not going to be in the club, he’s not going to want to play every game, he’s not going to put his heart on the line.”

Extrapolate that out a bit, and you get a sense of Kane’s mindset at Tottenham. He loves the club. He’s happy to stay. He wants to stay, and win things at Spurs. But he’s also not stupid: should something happen and the club implodes around his ears, he’s probably going to be open for a new challenge.

That’s fine. I wouldn’t expect anything less from him. So in order to keep Harry Kane happy, all Spurs have to do is keep getting better and eventually start winning things. Easy, right?