The not-so-secret Harry Kane Premier League return clause is the talk of the town after it was revealed that the Bayern Munich striker could have come back to England in January had he pushed for the exit, with the German side forced to accept an offer of €80m (£66.5m) if it arrived with Kane’s blessing.
With Bayern six points clear at the top of the Bundesliga, Kane made no noises over wanting to leave in a bid to finally bring his trophy drought to an end, but he will have another opportunity to trigger the clause in January 2026, when €65m (£54m) will be enough to secure his signature ahead of a summer transfer back to the promised land.
But which club would he join? We’ve ranked the Premier League Big Eight by the chance of them securing his signing, from least to most likely.
Paul Merson asks “why not?” as the first to reference Sol Campbell’s move across North London, but Kane refused to lift the Visit Malta Cup on his pre-season return to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the summer out of respect for his boyhood club.
He’s not about to burn all his bridges at Spurs by joining their bitter rivals who have caught their trophy-aversion bug in any case. It wouldn’t even be funny, more depressing, and could genuinely leave to widespread rioting.
We think they will probably look to upgrade Darwin Nunez in the summer, but there is a world in which they decide not to sign a new striker in the next window, with new recruits possibly required to replace the contract rebels instead, and wait for Kane to become available.
It feels all wrong though. Kane playing for Liverpool? Sorry, we’re not having it.
They probably don’t need Kane having signed Erling Haaland up for a decade and paying him a cool half million a week.
No release clause means Barcelona or Real Madrid will likely have to offer a ludicrous sum to prise him away from the Etihad (which isn’t impossible with magic levers and whatnot), or Haaland would have to push for the exit (also perfectly possible), or most likely he leaves when his relegation clause is triggered after City have the book thrown at them for their FFP shenanigans.
After a season in the Championship, Kane is drafted in upon City’s return to the top flight.
We’re still very much rooting for Nicolas Jackson but a year is probably enough time for us and Chelsea to come to the crushing realisation that he’s not quite at Kane’s level, at which point the club may also hopefully have realised that footballers over the age of 28 (or indeed 32 as Kane will be by then) are still footballers.
Marcus Rashford’s inevitable uplift having escaped Old Trafford will see him thrive for Villa and return triumphant to the England fold under Thomas Tuchel, where a partnership with Kane will flourish to the point where Unai Emery has little choice but to sign Kane and make the most of their bond at club level, while Ollie Watkins misses chance after chance for Arsenal.
Eddie Howe would probably prefer Alexander Isak not to be quite so bloody good thank you very much, because there is absolutely no way he’s going to be at Newcastle for much longer if he keeps destroying world-class centre-backs like William Saliba.
He’s already too good for Arsenal. Barcelona feels like a decent fit. But what about Kane plus a decent wedge from Bayern in a swap for Isak?
Manchester United waiting until January 2026 to secure a pre-contract agreement with Kane will mean one of two things: either Rasmus Hojlund or Joshua Zirkzee have improved dramatically so they delayed signing a new striker (which feels very unlikely right now) or they’ve become such a car crash of a football club that they’re no longer able to attract the calibre of player needed to improve them by pointing to dusty trophies or shouting THIS IS MANCHESTER UNITED in their faces.
They should have gone all out for Kane when they went for Hojlund, but while it feels like that moment has passed, it’s impossible to predict what state the club will be in a year’s time, who might be in charge or how much Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS cronies will be willing to sway from their long-term plan for quick fixes like Kane to keep the wolves from the door.