Sherwood Says Harry Kane’s Four Loan Spells Built the Ballon d’Or Winner

• Tim Sherwood, who gave Harry Kane his first Premier League start, called the Bayern Munich striker’s Ballon d’Or win “a Cinderella story we’ve never seen before”.
• Kane is the first Englishman to win the award in 25 years, at the age of 33 and 15 years after his senior debut on loan at Leyton Orient.
• Jamie Carragher says the move to Bayern made the award possible but still ranks Bobby Charlton above Kane as England’s greatest player.

The Loans Everyone Called Failures Were the Foundation

Tim Sherwood has watched Harry Kane break record after record, and he still cannot quite believe it. “He keeps breaking records, and I keep thinking, ‘Are we talking about the same kid?'” the former Tottenham manager told Sky Sports after Kane became the first English winner of the Ballon d’Or in 25 years.

Sherwood calls it “a Cinderella story we’ve never seen before”. The last English winner, Michael Owen, took a simpler route, claiming the award at 22 in 2001, four years after his senior debut at Liverpool. Kane is 33 and made that debut 15 years ago on loan at Leyton Orient in League One.

Between those two points came loan spells at Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester. Sherwood has heard them described as failures and rejects the label. “They were really good loans, and those loans were the reason why we’ve got a player like that,” he said. He thought leaving Kane in Under-21 football would have been a waste of time.

“Kane came through the hard way, really,” Sherwood said. “He was a player who wasn’t universally loved.” He contrasted that with Max Dowman, the Arsenal teenager who is already a superstar at 16, and said Kane struggled to get game time and to find a manager who fully believed in him.

Kane used his acceptance speech to thank Sherwood and to mention the loans, saying he had to “fight my way to get to where I am now”. He told Sky Sports that winning was “beyond his wildest dreams” and said he was happy to put England “back on the map”. On social media he posted: “Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.”

The Sliding Doors Moment at Spurs

Kane was out in the cold at Tottenham until Andre Villas-Boas was sacked and Sherwood took over. Sherwood handed the then 20-year-old his first Premier League start in April 2014, and Kane scored the opener in a 5-1 home win over Sunderland. “I suppose it’s a sliding doors moment that I managed to take over until the end of the season and I managed to give him a stage where he could perform,” Sherwood said.

The numbers that followed are huge. Kane has nearly 550 goals for club and country, and he is Tottenham’s record scorer, England’s all-time scorer, England’s leading World Cup scorer and the top English scorer in Champions League history. Last season he scored 73 goals in all competitions, 61 of them for Bayern. That was 19 more than any other player in Europe’s big-five leagues, and no player had scored as many in a season after Cristiano Ronaldo’s 61 for Real Madrid in 2014-15.

Carragher: He Could Not Have Won It at Spurs

Jamie Carragher believes the £100m move from Spurs to Bayern in the summer of 2023 changed Kane’s standing. “It’s a move he needed to make,” Carragher told Sky Sports. “There’s no way Harry Kane could’ve won the Ballon d’Or if he was playing for Tottenham.” Carragher had wondered whether Kane might be obsessed only with the Premier League goalscoring record, but decided he is obsessed with goalscoring records in general.

The move delivered the trophies Kane wanted, including back-to-back Bundesliga titles and a German Cup. Sherwood insists personal awards were never the aim. “He’s a 100 per cent team man,” he said, and he said Kane would rather win the Champions League and the Bundesliga than the Ballon d’Or.

Not Yet the Greatest Ever

Does the award make Kane England’s greatest player? Not for Carragher. “I would still always put Bobby Charlton as the greatest England player ever,” he said, pointing to Charlton’s World Cup win and his Champions League success with Manchester United. Carragher said this England team, in a golden period, still has no trophy to its name.

Kane needs one cap to become England’s most-capped player. Sherwood believes Kane will come back to the Premier League in a couple of years to chase Alan Shearer’s all-time record of 260 goals, which Kane trails by 47, and says he would only join a club he believes can win. For Tottenham fans, Sherwood’s message is to start progressing. For now, Kane’s Bayern side face Borussia Dortmund on Saturday.

WRITTEN BY

Jarrod

Jarrod Partridge is the Founder of Futbol Chronicle and an accredited journalist with over 30 years of experience following international football. A member of the AIPS International Sports Press Association, Jarrod has covered matches at stadiums around the world, bringing first-hand insight to every match report, player profile, and tactical analysis he writes.

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