Steven Caulker has revealed that Harry Kane was nowhere near the best player across his age group in the Tottenham academy but reveals that one thing always stood out about the striker from a young age.
Kane will arguably go down as Tottenham’s best player in the Premier League era and one of the best to ever grace the English top flight.
The striker not only became Spurs’ and England’s all-time leading goalscorer, but he is almost certain to have broken Alan Shearer’s all-time Premier League record by now if he had not left England.
After the 31-year-old recently won the first trophy of his career as Bayern Munich secured the Bundesliga title, one of his former Tottenham Hotspur teammates has made a very interesting revelation about the centre-forward.
Steven Caulker says Harry Kane did not stand out in Tottenham academy
Caulker, who was just one year behind Kane while coming through the ranks of the Tottenham academy, has revealed that the striker was not anywhere near as talented as the best young players in the Spurs youth set-up.
However, he revealed that the striker’s mentality was second to none from a young age, which is why he has gone on to achieve so much in the game.
The former Tottenham centre-back wrote on his LinkedIn: “Harry Kane wasn’t the best player in our youth team. In fact, at the time, I’m not sure I would have even put him in the top five. For context, I came through the Spurs academy, where they produced a phenomenal amount of talent in a really short space of time.
MORE SPURS STORIES
“Kyle Walker, Kyle Naughton, Danny Rose, Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason, Adam Smith, Jake Livermore, Tommy Carroll, Alex Pritchard, Nabil Bentaleb, and myself all went on to play in the Premier League.
“Plus many other talented players who went on to play professional football at various different levels. Harry was in the year below me, and if I’m honest, he rarely stood out to me as having anything special.
“One thing I do remember, though, is his mentality. It was second to none. Roll on a few years and a few loan spells later, Harry got his break with Spurs.
“Harry has gone on to surpass all of us with his incredible individual achievements; the only player in the same bracket is Kyle Walker, who Spurs paid a lot of money for as a youngster.”
Kane’s journey is a lesson for Spurs when it comes to Dane Scarlett and co
It is worth pointing out that Kane failed to pull up any trees during his loan spell at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City.
His first Premier League start for Spurs did not come until April 2014, when he was already 21 years of age, and no one gave him a chance of becoming a first-team regular at the time, let alone one of Tottenham’s greatest ever players.