BREAKING: Tottenham and Bayern reach agreement in principle for Harry Kane

Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich have reached an agreement in principle for the transfer of Harry Kane. This agreement comes after a weekend when Spurs rejected Bayern’s “take it or leave it” offer last Friday, but the teams continued to negotiate to try and hammer out a deal. The news was broken by The Athletic’s David Ornstein, but is now being reported in multiple outlets including by Alasdair Gold of Football.London and Sami Mokbel of the Daily Mail.

Details of the deal are still fuzzy. Ornstein says the agreement is north of €100m, Mokbel reports a figure of £95m (€110m), an amount that includes optional clauses and escalators over the course of the contract, while Matteo Moretto is reporting an all-inclusive bid of €120m. We do not as of yet know how that all breaks down; Levy reportedly rejected Bayern’s last supposed bid of €100m + 20m in part because he was not satisfied with the percentage of guaranteed money. This deal presumably satisfies that concern, but we don’t know yet know how. We also don’t yet know if there is any buy-back clause in the contract.

Interestingly, the agreement is being couched, at least in the English media, as it now coming down to Kane’s final decision. That’s a narrative shift, from what I can tell — it has always been swirling in the background that Kane wanted to leave for Bayern, with reports in Germany going as far as to say that personal terms had already been agreed to weeks ago. That supposedly leaves the door open for Kane to reject a move to Germany, though I would consider that extremely unlikely; after all, if the clubs went through this much effort and negotiation to get to a “yes” only for Kane to turn down the opportunity to join Bayern Munich, then what was all this for?

Today’s agreement brings to a conclusion a saga that has been swirling for a long, long time. Yes, the Bayern rumors are relatively recent, but Harry Kane has been agitating to leave Tottenham Hotspur for years since he pushed for a move to Manchester City, a move that was soundly rejected by Levy. Since then Kane has said all the right things in public but has privately rejected all Tottenham offers of a new contract that would keep him a one-club man.

Make no mistake, if he leaves, Harry Kane is doing so because he wants to win things and doesn’t believe that he can do that at Spurs in the present climate. That does not mean that he doesn’t love Tottenham Hotspur — he’s been very clear this whole time that he wants to leave with his Spurs legacy intact and on good terms with the club and his fans.

For Tottenham, this would mean a sudden influx of cash, and all expect that they will immediately reinvest these proceeds into retooling the squad into something closer to what Ange Postecoglou wants for his tactics. Spurs are already linked with a move for Gent striker Gift Orban, and are also linked with additional defensive reinforcements.

This is a sad day. Nobody really wanted Kane to be sold, but it can also be viewed as an opportunity to turn the page on the previous era of Tottenham Hotspur and emphatically start a new project.

Much more to come as we learn of it.