I’m a 37-year-old Tottenham fan and I’m not ashamed to say I’m heartbroken at Harry Kane’s exit
There’s no shame in admitting why we love Kane and feel so very gutted about him leaving
August 12, 2023 11:00 am(Updated 11:28 am)
I had a macabre dream a few nights ago. It felt so real and so sad that it took me an hour or two to fully shake off its cloak of melancholy.
I hesitate to share the details, because it reveals the darkness of my imagination as well as the embarrassing depths of my football fandom. But here goes: Harry Kane had died. The breaking-news banner on Sky Sports News had turned black and the channel was showing replays of his best goals, reporting on the tragedy of a life cut so devastatingly short at just 30 years-old.
While recounting all of Kane’s achievements – those golden boots from the World Cup and the Premier League and the immortal goalscoring records he broke for England and Spurs – the TV pundits were also describing a sporting tragedy: his colossal skills had never earned him any team winners’ medals.
You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to guess from all this that I’m a Tottenham supporter. The speculation about his transfer to Bayern Munich this summer, and the continual reminders that he hasn’t won any team trophies with us, have seeped into my subconscious. Even during a holiday to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday, even while the biggest stress of my life is an epic ongoing battle over the leasehold charges for my flat, this morbid vision made it clear what’s really on my mind.
When I awoke, it was a relief to gradually realise the news wasn’t true. But it was also the moment I finally accepted what really, probably, was happening: Kane would be leaving the club of his childhood and my own.
I admit there is a certain silliness about hero-worshipping any millionaire sportsman when I’m 37, especially to the extent that I’m having existential dreams about them.
But sport is about people – our shared stories and experiences of tension and drama, of physical skill, of winning and losing – and it’s only natural for our clubs’ best players to feel like personifications of our own hopes and dreams.
There’s no shame in Spurs supporters admitting why we love Kane and feel so very gutted about him leaving – even if, like me, you wish him well and reluctantly accept that he’s making the right decision.
The fact that he’s “one of our own” – unlike, say, Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United or Thierry Henry at Arsenal – has been a huge element in our devotion. The lad from Walthamstow has loved winning London derbies as much as us, and we could take pride that this ruthless striker and true gentleman was our England captain.
There’s no getting away from the fact that other clubs’ greatest players have tended to earn that status by holding silverware aloft, and other contenders for Kane’s Spurs crown have succeeded in ways that he hasn’t: Danny Blanchflower with the 1961 double, Jimmy Greaves with the first European tournament won by any British team, Glenn Hoddle with two FA Cups and a Uefa Cup. But in a strange way, perhaps that’s what has made Harry feel uniquely irreplaceable, because we’ve had no choice but to savour his bundles of goals for their own sake, rather than for any greater achievement.
Some will argue that breaking Alan Shearer’s Premier League goalscoring record would mean more to Kane than any trophies at Bayern, who win everything in Germany anyway.
Even if you’ve only played football in the mud of Hackney Marshes, however, you’ll know that team glory feels so much better than any individual achievements. Winning any competition is brilliant, and I can’t blame him for wanting to optimise his chances of that before retirement by moving to a genuine superclub where he could win the Champions League.
This doesn’t invalidate the joys he’s brought us week after week, season after season. It’s ok for Spurs fans to be disappointed that Kane didn’t even secure one League Cup with us before jumping ship (can brilliance have ever felt so bittersweet?), and simultaneously feel blessed to have watched all the headers and tap-ins and thunderbolts and chips that he treated us to, so many of them match-winners.
Most football clubs will never have a player like Kane. Most teams don’t get near enough to glory to feel disconsolate about missing out. Though we shouldn’t be complacent about falling short too often, nor should we ever feel entitled to cups or championships and believe they’re all that matter.
It’s disappointing that I won’t be able to recall my years of watching Kane at the Lane by looking at the Spurs honours list in matchday programmes, yet I’ll still happily remember all the times I’ve hugged my dad after one of our talisman’s hat-tricks.