A LOOK BACK: Tottenham Hotspur have been busy in the transfer market on plenty of occasions, but sometimes they've been beaten to the punch on targets
Dutch striker Dirk Kuyt will forever go down in history as a Liverpool cult hero, but in another world, he might have wound up at Tottenham. The former Feyenoord star scored 51 Premier League goals for the Reds, including a memorable hat-trick in a victory over Manchester United, though things could have been very different.
Kuyt's return of three successive 20-goal seasons in the Eredivisie - two for Feyenoord and one for Utrecht - put English clubs on high alert. Spurs were one of the interested parties, but the timing was wrong.
He ended up staying in Rotterdam, scoring another 22 league goals in the 2005/06 season - second only to Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. The summer after that, Liverpool had followed Spurs in pushing for a move, and that meant the London side had no chance.
“A year before I went to Liverpool, I had the opportunity to go to Spurs, where the manager, Martin Jol, and chairman, Daniel Levy, expressed an interest," Kuyt told FourFourTwo in 2017. "But it was on transfer deadline day, and at that time I didn’t want to move.
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“Later on, Liverpool became the number one club who wanted me, although all the negotiations took a while. Other clubs showed an interest too, such as Atletico Madrid.
"That’s also a nice club, but once I’d heard of Liverpool’s interest, it was the only club I wanted to go to. From a young age, I’d always liked Liverpool.”
The timing of Kuyt's comments suggests Spurs signed Grzegorz Rasiak after receiving the bad news from the Dutchman. Rasiak was a deadline day signing in August 2005, but was gone within a year, joining Southampton on loan and then permanently.
Kuyt only won one trophy at Liverpool, scoring in the final as they beat Cardiff to win the League Cup in 2012. He left as a fan favourite, though, returning for Liverpool Legends matches in the years since his retirement.
The former striker, now 45, has moved into management. He's currently in charge at Dutch second-tier side Doordrecht, but previously expressed a desire to work with former team-mate Steven Gerrard in the Anfield dugout.