Harry Kane knows his way around a football.
The Tottenham Hotspur star and English international is considered one of soccer's top strikers. In 2017, Kane recorded 56 goals in all competitions, the most of any goal scorer in Europe, including Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. He followed a successful club campaign in 2018 with a six-goal showing during England's run to the World Cup semifinals. That achievement won him the Golden Boot, becoming the first English player to do so in a World Cup since 1986.
But Kane also has passion for that other kind of football, American football, and in an ESPN feature published on Wednesday, the 25-year-old striker said that one day he'd like to try his, er, foot at kicking in the NFL.
"That's real," Kane told ESPN's Bruce Schoenfeld. "Something that in 10 or 12 years I definitely want to try."
Kane further explains in the feature that his love for the NFL comes from an admiration for New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, whose highlights he started watching on YouTube, and the QB's rise from sixth-round pick to superstardom.
That attitude has apparently factored into his desire to be a NFL placekicker.
"It goes back to that drive to be the best," he says. "Even if I download a game on my phone, can I be the best in the world? ... If you play in the Premier League and the World Cup and you then play in the NFL, would you then be considered one of the greatest sportsmen ever?"
Kane has crossed paths with the NFL in the past. In addition to participating in segments with NFL Films Presents and attending the Super Bowl LIII afterparty as a guest of Brady, the new stadium in which Kane's club, Tottenham, will play its home matches going forward will also play host to at least two NFL games per year over the next 10 seasons.
How realistic is that Kane, a world-renowned footballer, will at the age of 35 or so make the NFL as a placekicker? Many NFL kickers have soccer backgrounds, but few if any dedicated part of their professional lives to playing, and even fewer dominating, the beautiful game.
Perhaps the most notable example is Toni Fritsch, an Austrian League striker who won three League titles for Rapid Wein in the 1960s before moving to the States to be an NFL placekicker. Fritsch went on to win a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys in his rookie season (1971) and was an All-Pro and Pro Bowl selection in 1979. Fritsch kicked in professional football, including the USFL until he was 40 years old.
So an eventual move for Kane from the wundergoal to the field goal isn't impossible, even if it is unlikely.
