How Arsenal Inspired Harry Kane’s Record-Breaking Tottenham Career—Twice

A broken foot, failed transfer and Mauricio Pochettino’s relationship with the universe all played their part in Kane’s Tottenham career.

Harry Kane almost never made it at Tottenham. | High Performance/YouTube/Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Visionhaus/GLYN KIRK/AFP/Ian MacNicol/AFP/Getty Images

Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has explained how Arsenal’s acquisition of Danny Welbeck in the summer of 2014 allowed the Argentine boss to rely upon a young Harry Kane, who would go on to become the club’s all-time top scorer and greatest ever player.

If a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the globe can cause a typhoon on the other, an injury to Olivier Giroud certainly has the potential to pave the way for Kane.

Cast your mind back to August 2014. Barack Obama is still U.S. president, Germany are freshly crowned World Cup champions and almost no one has heard the name Harry Kane. The 21-year-old had struggled through loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City before returning to Spurs in 2013.

André Villas-Boas tried to send Kane out on another temporary expedition only to be bluntly refused by the player himself. “There were a few good clubs interested in me that would’ve been O.K., but that wasn’t my dream,” Kane later told The Players’ Tribune. “My dream wasn’t to play in the Premier League. My dream was to play in the Premier League for Spurs.”

Tim Sherwood replaced Villas-Boas midway through the 2013–14 season and handed Kane his first Premier League start in April. The former Ridgeway Rovers forward rewarded that faith with three goals in a trio of successive games to end the campaign.

Yet, as Mauricio Pochettino took over to start the post-World Cup season, Tottenham had plans to block Kane’s pathway.

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The Best Transfer Tottenham Never Made

Danny Welbeck was a target for Tottenham in the summer of 2014. | David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Pochettino was at pains to stress how much faith he and his assistant Jesús Pérez had in Kane upon their appointment at Spurs. “When we arrived to Tottenham, when we saw Harry Kane, we said, ‘No, it’s a player that we need. He’s young. He needs to stay with us,’ ” the Argentine coach bragged on the High Performance podcast.

By Pochettino’s recollection, the club did not share their faith and proved impossible to convince.

“But I remember that [there] was [Emmanuel] Adebayor and [Roberto] Soldado, but the club wasn’t sure about Harry Kane’s future and they wanted to sign a third striker,” the current U.S. men’s national team coach recalled. The chief gripe of Tottenham’s hierarchy was that Kane had “no experience” and ignored their manager to plough forward with an approach for Danny Welbeck, then of Manchester United.

“We were so lucky because the club made an offer for Welbeck,” Pochettino revealed. “But [Olivier] Giroud got injured and Arsenal made a bigger offer and Welbeck signed for Arsenal.”

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Harry Kane’s Tottenham Career

Statistic	Value
Joined	Aug. 16, 2004
Games	435
Goals	280
Assists	63

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Arsenal’s first-choice striker Giroud broke his foot at the end of August and would spend the next three months on the sidelines. Despite Arsène Wenger’s initial insistence that the Gunners would not dip into the transfer market for his replacement, the north London outfit swooped in front of their rivals to sign Welbeck for £16 million ($26 million at the time) on Deadline Day.

“[It] was lucky because we didn’t bring Welbeck and [there] was the space for Harry Kane,” Pochettino smiled, putting this sequence of events down to “confirmation from the universe” that Kane “was special.”

Despite all this supposed faith in the youngster, Pochettino didn’t start Kane in any of his first 10 Premier League matches as manager. The ambitious frontman was called off the bench against Aston Villa in November and snagged a 90th-minute winner with a deflected free kick to belatedly earn himself a start the following weekend. Kane failed to find the net in a defeat to Stoke City but retained his position before scoring in a win at Hull City. The rest is history.

While Welbeck would enjoy a respectable if injury-riddled few years at Arsenal, amassing 32 goals in 126 appearances, Kane scored established himself as one of Europe’s premier strikers—a status he still retains 12 years later.

“No one has had a bigger impact on my career than Mauricio,” Kane wistfully reflected.

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Kane’s First Rejection By Arsenal

Arguably the best striker in the world, but Harry Kane is still criminally underrated.

Read @henrywinter's full article here: https://t.co/zVKjOHEL8p pic.twitter.com/Yroo7dxJnV

— Sports Illustrated FC (@SI_FootballClub) October 13, 2025

Intriguingly, Arsenal’s purchase of Welbeck was not the first time the Gunners played a role in the formation of the Tottenham legend. Kane originally joined Arsenal’s youth system before he was released at the age of eight.

The Gunners’ academy director at the time, iconic former player Liam Brady, remembered Kane as “a bit chubby” and “not very athletic.” He also added: “We made a mistake.”

That early disappointment fuelled Kane over the next two decades.

“For me, the rejection is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Kane would later reflect. “When I was lacing my up boots for my first start in the north London derby back in 2015, I had a flashback to when I was 11, playing against Arsenal’s youth team. It was like déjà vu.

“...We were in the tunnel, and I thought, ‘O.K. Took me 12 years. But we’ll see who was right and who was wrong.’ ” Kane delivered an emphatic answer with both goals in a 2–1 win at White Hart Lane.

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