Man City to consider Harry Kane bid if they fail to sign Erling Haaland
Manchester City will ‘consider’ a summer approach for Tottenham talisman Harry Kane this summer if they fail to land primary target Erling Haaland in their quest for a new striker.
All-time top scorer Sergio Aguero will leave City when his contract expires in three months, ending his decade-long stay in Manchester and making finding a new ‘number nine’ in the transfer market even more crucial ahead of next season.
City had already decided that a new striker is their greatest priority this year, even before putting together any sort of offer for unsettled Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi. Reports from Spain today suggest City have now accepted Messi will renew with his current club.
Haaland is the player they have identified as the ideal signing in that pursuit and 90min has previously revealed that City consider themselves favourites for the Norwegian prodigy, whose father was at the club in the early 2000s until injury ended his career prematurely.
City officials have been in touch with the Haaland camp since the youngster’s early days playing in Norway, before a whirlwind rise with Red Bull Salzburg and now Borussia Dortmund.
There has been a feeling among Haaland’s suitors that, despite only joining Dortmund in January 2020, he is already prepared to move on and take the next step in his career. Chelsea are very interested, while Real Madrid and Manchester United are also keeping an eye on him.
But whether he will be able to move on this summer, a year before a €75m (£64m) release becomes active, has fallen into some doubt since it was rumoured that Dortmund will demand €180m (£154m) from any club looking to sign the 20-year-old now.
Sticking rigidly to a high price was the same tactic the Bundesliga side employed when trying to prevent Manchester United from signing Jadon Sancho last summer and it worked.
If City are unable to sign Haaland this summer, they are already thinking about alternatives and The Times reports that the English champions elect would then consider an approach for Kane.
The Spurs star leads the Premier League in both goals (17) and assists (13) this season. And while he is seven years older than Haaland and cannot offer the same long-term investment, Kane is already a proven Premier League goalscorer.
However, Kane might not actually come much cheaper than Haaland as it has been rumoured already that Spurs would ask for £150m in the hope of scaring off potential suitors.
Kane’s future at Spurs has come into doubt in recent months amid suggestions that he has grown frustrated by the club’s lack of silverware and lessening future prospects. The chance to win the Premier League has been and gone, they are not in a position to return to the Champions League final any time soon and were even stunned by Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League recently.
Kane himself has remained coy on the subject. He has refused to outright discuss it but has equally skirted around the issue of potentially moving on and hasn’t ruled anything out.
“I think that’s a hard question to answer right now,” he said last weekend.
“It’s important that all my focus is on the England games coming up now and the rest of the season with Spurs and then the Euros. To be thinking about speculation or rumours would be damaging in terms of my own performance.
“I always like to be focused on one goal and one job and that’s to finish strong with Spurs, win these qualifiers with England and hopefully go on and have a great Euros. I try to stay out of that speculation as much as possible. I’m fully focused on doing the job on the pitch from now until the end of the summer and then we’ll see where we go from there.”
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