England captain Harry Kane has arrived in Germany for a medical at Bayern Munich as he nears a move from Tottenham.
Bayern and Spurs agreed a deal worth more than 100m euros (£86.4m) for the 30-year-old on Thursday.
The decision to move was then left up to Kane, who is Tottenham’s all-time top scorer with 280 goals in 435 appearances.
Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou confirmed on Friday the deal is “imminent”.
Kane had one year left on his contract and was unlikely to stay with the club.
Providing there are no unexpected issues, Kane’s move will be completed in time to start the Bundesliga season next week.
It was felt the striker wanted a decision around his future made before the season began, but it has taken Bayern most of the summer to reach a point where Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was prepared to do a deal.
Kane had initially been linked with a move to Manchester United this summer, but it was unclear whether Levy would have been willing to sell him to another Premier League club.
He could have run down the final year of his contract before leaving on a free transfer in 2024.
Manchester City’s attempt to sign Kane in 2021 prompted the England striker to delay his return for pre-season training, but he played on Tottenham’s recent pre-season tour of Australia and South East Asia while negotiations with Bayern continued and last appeared on Sunday against Shakhtar Donetsk.
Spurs will face Brentford in their first match of the season on Sunday while Bayern begin their campaign against RB Leipzig in the German Super Cup on Saturday.
Kane has won the Premier League Golden Boot three times – in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2020-21 – and with 213 goals from 320 games in the English top-flight he needs just 48 more to break Alan Shearer’s Premier League scoring record. A move to Germany could kill off that prospect.
Shearer posted on social media following Friday morning’s news to joke it is time for Kane to move on from the Premier League, with the expected departure leaving the former Newcastle and Blackburn striker’s tally of 260 top-flight goals safe for now.
Kane, who is England’s all-time leading scorer with 58 international goals, has never won a major trophy with club or country.
Bayern Munich claimed their 33rd Bundesliga title last season – an 11th in a row – and have won the Champions League six times and German Cup on 20 occasions.
In a news conference on Friday, Postecoglou said that Kane had already “made up his mind” by the time the Australian took the manager job in June.
“I don’t have a blow by blow account but my understanding is that it’s progressed to a point where it’s going to happen and a deal is imminent” Postecoglou said.
“That at least gives us some clarity, unless something unforeseen happens – we move forward without Harry.”
The Spurs boss also said that Kane had wanted a deal done before the start of the Premier League season and that plans were in place for his departure.
“It doesn’t take too much investigative work to realise that this was going to happen. A lot of our business up until now has been with that in mind,” he added.
“It’s not like we had a pow wow this morning like ‘what do we do?'”
Postecoglou added that Kane will always be one of Spurs’ “greats” and that his move will not change that.
Earlier on Friday, Bayern boss Thomas Tuchel also faced the media and said his club were working with “full pressure” on the deal.
“We can confirm this, but as we speak there is no agreement yet and if there is no agreement yet then the coach cannot talk about someone who is not their player,” Tuchel said.
“I understand there are a lot of ifs and whens. All options are open. The first is to have him as a player and at the moment he is not yet that.
“This is a big deal. We are trying to take the England captain away from the Premier League.”
(BBC)
