BREAKING: Bayern Munich submit €70m bid for Harry Kane

Yesterday, reports from prominent journalists indicated that Tottenham Hotspur star Harry Kane was a top transfer target for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. Today, there is breaking news from The Athletic’s David Ornstein and Sky Sports Germany’s Florian Plettenberg that Bayern has submitted a written bid to purchase Kane for more than €70m.

Tottenham Hotspur has rejected the deal.

This is an unsurprising response from Spurs — €70m (£60m) is significantly less than Spurs would want for Kane, if they’d even be willing to entertain a sale at all which it’s not clear they would. But it’s about what I expected from Bayern. The German giants are not in the habit of bidding huge amounts of money for their top talent, and with Kane entering into the final year of his contract it’s worth at least throwing in a low-ball offer to see what happens.

Well, now we know what happens: Tottenham hangs up the phone.

We don’t know what Harry Kane has said to the Spurs, but the fact that he didn’t completely shut down a potential Bayern bid before it happened pretty much tells us everything we need to know — he’s not intending to sign a new contract at Tottenham. He either wants to be sold to a club of his choosing or he will leave Spurs next summer for nothing at the end of his contract. He won’t raise a big stink about it because he doesn’t have to — his Spurs contract is such that if nothing desirable materializes he can simply run out the clock.

For me, that means that if Spurs are anything close to the smart club that they say they are (or want to be) this bid from Bayern should be considered the start of negotiations. It’s a low-ball bid from Bayern, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that a deal can’t be made. As always, the ball’s still firmly in Daniel Levy’s court. Now we wait to see what happens next.