Spurs balls: Kane and Alli get pay rise but Manchester United and Chelsea wait
The Sun leads with news that Spurs will invest £25m in tying Dele Alli and Harry Kane to long term deals. The money won’t come in one hit. As the paper says:
Striker Kane, currently on £45,000 a week, is likely to be offered a deal worth £70,000 a week. Alli would double his pay from £12,500 to £25,000 a week.
Good money. Great money for young men doing what they love. But compared to the £300,00o-a-week Wayne Rooney earns at Manchester Untied or the £200,000-a-week Raheem Sterling earns over the same period at Manchester City, not much.
Spurs fans eager for their club to hang onto two bright prospects will not be comforted by the numbers. Any idea that Kane will stay put out of loyalty (the Spurs fans hopeful chant that Harry is “one of our own” is sweet and desperate) is undermined by pictures of the young Harry wearing an Arsenal kit.
As for Alli, he spoke with David Hytner in October:
In his first newspaper interview as a Tottenham Hotspur player, Dele Alli said “unreal” and “surreal” on a number of occasions. Then again, he was speaking after making his first start for the club, in the showpiece friendly against Real Madrid at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena, in front of 70,000 fans and, 24 minutes in, he had nutmegged Luka Modric.
Alli said that he and Real’s superstar midfielder had “had a laugh about it in the tunnel afterwards”.
That’s Modric, who used to play for Spurs before a bigger club beckoned him over. He plays with Gareth Bale, who made the same move from White Hart Lane to Madrid. Alli joined Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham squad in February 2014 for £5m.
Says Pochettino:
“It is the same situation as with Harry Kane last season. Be careful with the young players that arrive in the Premier League. It is not easy. You can see that Dele is very mature and a player who shows great quality. He has a great personality and good character. But it is too much of a rush to talk about bigger steps for him. Always in football, you need to take it step-by-step, game-by-game.”
Until a big club with vast sums of money comes calling.
Posted: 21st, November 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports, Spurs Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
