At the end of that season Tim Sherwood was replaced by Mauricio Pochettino, who joined Tottenham from Southampton. I’d seen his Southampton team play and saw how he liked his sides to press high up the field. Tottenham by this time had sold Dempsey and Defoe, so when he first took over at Spurs my first thought was that Adebayor and Soldado would not be able to play the way he liked his striker to play. It just wasn’t their sort of game, and that fact eventually proved crucial for Harry.
‘When he came in I thought it was my chance,’ he admits. ‘There were only two strikers in front of me. I’d seen the way Southampton played, and thought, “That’s me.” I knew I suited his philosophy. I had a good pre-season – everyone was playing half a game, and I scored goals – but once again I couldn’t get in that Premier League team. I played in the Europa League and was scoring goals, but I couldn’t get in that Premier League side. I was getting minutes here and there, but then I came on in the game at Aston Villa in November and that was kind of the start of it.
‘I’ve spoken to the manager about what happened at the start of that season and he asked me, “Why do you think you weren’t playing?” I said, “I don’t know, but obviously Adebayor was a big-money player, and they’d spent a lot on Soldado.” He said that wasn’t the reason. He told me that he knew I was scoring goals and doing well, but he didn’t want to just throw me in ahead of Adebayor and Soldado and have people asking why they weren’t playing. So he gave them the chance to play. They weren’t doing what he wanted, so he brought me in. He said that Soldado and Adebayor couldn’t then knock on his door and say, “Why are you playing this young kid in front of me?” He gave everyone a chance to play, but he always knew that I was going to be the one that he wanted playing. Because for him there was no rush. It wasn’t like he’d come in and got six months to change everything. He knew he was building a team over two, three, four years. He’s a great manager, the best I’ve worked under. People will say I would say that because he gave me my chance, but it’s not that. It’s the kind of all-round person he is. He’s very smart. He’s brave. He’s not afraid of big-money signings, and he gets in and plays who he thinks is best. We’ve got a young team and I can only see us getting better. We’re moving to a new stadium in a couple of years, so the future’s very bright.’
Having finally made that breakthrough into the Tottenham side, Harry seemed to get better by the week, scoring goals for fun in that first season, getting thirty-one in all and twenty-one of them in the league, and taking seventy-nine seconds to score for England in his full debut against Lithuania. Not surprisingly he very quickly became a firm favourite with the Tottenham fans, with them singing the now-famous song about him, ‘Harry Kane, he’s one of our own’ – that seems to be exactly what he is and why the supporters can so readily identify with him. To go from the relative obscurity of being a squad player with Tottenham to being their main man within the space of a less than a season could easily have had an unsettling effect on a young player, but that’s not the case with Harry. He is a very down-to-earth individual who is both happy and grateful to be in the position he finds himself in.
‘I’m a normal person and a big football fan,’ he insists. ‘I have a good family, good friends and a good agent. I always wanted this dream and I’m quite level-headed. There were times when it was tough, but to be in the situation that I’m in now is what I wanted. What it’s about now is maintaining it, not taking my foot off the gas because I’ve got a nice house and I’m playing every week. I want to go on and win trophies. For me it’s always about getting better and better. But it’s different for me now, even walking down the street and people stopping you. Your life changes so quickly – and when you hit the international stage and you play for England, it doubles. But for me it’s always been about getting better. It’s having that inner drive and it’s never been about the money – it’s about winning trophies and playing on the big stage.
‘There are rich teams out there and they pay their youngsters a lot of money. You do see youngsters who get ahead of themselves and you think, “What have you achieved to be doing this or that, to be driving around in that car?” If you’re good enough and you’re playing and doing well, you’ll get more money than you could ever imagine anyway. You can’t, as a fifteen-, sixteen- or seventeen-year-old be thinking, “I’m going to get loads of money,” because to get that you’ve got to be doing well on the pitch. It’s common sense that if you perform on the pitch and get better and better, money’s not going to be a problem.
‘Things are different for me now to when I first made my debut. Back then you didn’t really know what to expect, walking out at White Hart Lane for the first time playing for the first team, and you want to impress and maybe you overdo things or try too hard. Now I’ve played plenty of games, and when I walk out there now I’m at home. It’s about getting experience as a young player, which is why I think the loans were important. I didn’t just come from reserve football to playing under the lights in a big stadium in front of big crowds.’
Having had such a good first season for Tottenham and at international level obviously meant there was pressure on him to perform right from the start of the 2015–16 season. There were comments and whispers about him possibly suffering second-season syndrome and not being able to turn it on again in the way that he had when he burst on the scene. Harry had to put up with mutterings about him being a one-season wonder from some people, and when he began the new season and failed to score in the league for Tottenham until the end of September there were whispers from some, questioning whether he was the genuine article. I never had any doubt that he was, and what impressed me about his play during that barren spell for him was his overall play for the team. He never hid or shirked his responsibilities, and because he has the ability to drop off and play as a number 10 he’s able to allow his teammates to go past him and can set up other people in the team. So even when he wasn’t scoring he was influencing the game.
‘It was always in the back of my mind – even at the end of that first season – that if I didn’t score for two or three games, at the start of the next one people would say, “Second season. He’s not going to do it again.” Sometimes it was difficult,’ he admits, ‘when you’re reading things maybe online or on social media, with people saying, “He’s not as good as he was last year. He’s not the same player.” But I knew I was still playing well; it was just the goals that were the difference. I was doing well for the team, I was working hard for the team, so for me not a lot had changed except for the goals. I stayed positive and it wasn’t like I was under pressure from the manager to score. He was happy with the way I was playing. I’ve always scored goals at any level I’ve been at, so I knew the goals were eventually going to come.
‘Then things clicked and I managed to score quite a few in a row. It was a good moment for me – to prove everyone wrong and show that it wasn’t just a one-season thing. I knew that I wasn’t going to let that happen, but I did have something to prove and I stayed positive. But it does hurt you when people say, “Oh, he’s not good enough. He’s rubbish. It was a one-off season.” It does hurt you – it would hurt anyone – but it gets that fire in my belly going and it makes you want to prove them wrong. When it did happen I wasn’t going to say, “I told you so.” I just got on with my business. I’d come home sometimes when I wasn’t scoring and I’d be angry. I’d talk to my girlfriend and she would say all the right things, and I’d