A little-known fact about Harry Kane’s infamous ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Daniel Levy was that if Kane could physically escape Spurs, Levy would have to let him go. Here are some of the striker’s failed bids for freedom:
2019
After home games, Kane had been patiently scraping an escape tunnel out of the catacombs of Wembley, using only those funny plastic bits you get in shin pads. Only a few metres from daylight, Spurs moved to their new stadium, and the frontman had to abandon the tunnels.
2020
The so-called thigh muscle rupture that took Kane out of action for 14 games was little more than an excuse for another escape attempt. On his frequent trips to the physio, the Spurs captain tried to sedate medical staff with renditions of his pre-match team talks. The plan was to swap clothes and simply walk out the front door. Unfortunately, while Kane’s droning platitudes were enough to lull docs into a shallow sleep, they would always wake up when he tried to nab their scrubs.
2021
When Spurs rejected Man City’s £100m offer for Kane, Pep dispatched a crack unit to extract the striker from the heavily fortified Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. On a cloudy, moonless night in September, turtle-neck clad England teammates Foden, Grealish and Phillips scaled the south stand and almost infiltrated Kane’s high security suite. The mission was going smoothly until Phillips got distracted by the smells coming from the canteen. Lowering himself from the ceiling towards a tray of pies, he began stuffing his face, and soon enough the rope began to fray under his increasing weight. As a bloated Phillips crashed down into pots, pans and cutlery, the alarm was raised, and the extraction foiled.
2022
Escape plans were smuggled in to Spurs in Richarlison’s tattoos but couldn’t be seen until the Brazilian celebrated a goal, which delayed everything for yet another year. Even when revealed, the plan failed because no-one could look at his back without collapsing in a fit of cringe.