In a league of their own: Kane and Maguire laughing all the way to their agents’ offices

Here’s a thought: would we admire, or revere, Premier League stars the way we do if they were paid half a million pounds a year instead of a million pounds a month? 

The transfer this week from Tottenham to Bayern Munich of the England captain Harry Kane was a melodrama dressed up as a psychodrama. Would he or wouldn’t he? Could he bear to walk away from White Hart Lane? Would the Germans pull the plug? And would the Spurs chairman Daniel Levy let him go? 

In the end (despite being held up at Stansted airport while awaiting the final all-clear), he went, as he was surely bound to do. Bayern paid Tottenham a reported £100 million to secure his signature, plus, it is said, an agreement that Kane would be paid £400,000 a week – £20,800,000 a year. Levy had finally cottoned on that he either took the money now or his boy would exit at the end of the season, when he would be a free agent, leaving the north London club with nothing but memories.  

We are told that Kane took the decision to forsake the setup he had been part of since he was 11 years-old in order, at last, to be part of a winning team. Spurs have been the nearly-club of the Premier League for all of its history, never winning the title, while failing, unlike Chelsea, Arsenal, both Manchester clubs and Liverpool, to establish themselves as one of Europe’s élite clubs. 

Kane, who turned 30 last month, is Spurs’ and England’s most successful striker, having scored 350 goals for club and country. But he never managed to get his hands on any silverware. Not once was he awarded a winner’s medal, not even for the lowly League Cup. 

In Munich, he can confidently expect to attach his name to at least a couple of Bundesliga titles and, in all likelihood, the Champions League. Unless the experiment goes horribly wrong, he will be feted by his new fans and treated like a true football God. 

Now let’s look at the money. At Spurs, where he was the unquestioned number one draw, he was reportedly paid a “mere” £10.4 million a year, a reflection of the fact, daft though it sounds, that he grew up with the club and never had to be bought for more than an everyday mega salary. At Bayern, his wages will double overnight, meaning, assuming he stays for the duration of his contract, that his net worth on retirement will be something like £80 million, plus millions more from sponsorship – say £100 million in total. 

How’s that for a pound of mince?, as my old news editor at the Sunday Telegraph used to say. One-hundred-million-pounds, for playing football! 

And I haven’t even mentioned Beckham, Messi or Ronaldo. Or tennis. Or Formula 1. 

But you get my point. Even journeymen footballers who leave the top-flight in their mid-thirties having toiled at several clubs without ever setting the heather on fire, can hope to retire with ten or fifteen million pounds in the bank. 

Their idol, Harry Kane, is a formidable goal-scorer, who in retirement will probably seek to increase his wealth through “shrewd” property investments. But all over the UK, untold millions will end up with a net worth considerably less than what Kane will earn between getting out of bed on Monday morning and kicking off at Bayern’s Allianz Arena on a Saturday afternoon. 

Which brings me to Harry Maguire. I can’t help it. I feel sorry for Maguire, whose career, once solid, came adrift at Manchester United – so much so that he has had to accept demotion to West Ham, a club, like Spurs, that always seems to be less than the sum of its parts. I wish him well. I want him to show the bullies at Old Trafford that he is still a player to be reckoned with, not only for the Hammers, but for England. 

So how much is “poor” Harry worth? Bear in mind that the average full-time salary across much of the UK is less than £30,000 and that the state pension, as it stands, is less than £10,000 a year. Well, if the accountants at Google are to be believed, Maguire made a little under £8.5 million a year at United, which paid a record £78 million for him in 2016 in the mistaken belief that he was someone else. Over the years, whether or not he was appreciated on the pitch, he has amassed a net worth of £20 million. He is strong as a horse and, aged 30, should end up with more like £30-35 million, which in my book is a result. 

Will he ever be part of a winning team, like “Rich” Harry? Maybe, maybe not. But he won’t have to count the pennies. I would expect him to stay in the best hotels, drive the most expensive cars and retire to a McMansion in Cheshire, sending his children to private schools (to insulate them from the envy of their impecunious peers) and holidaying at his luxury villas in Spain and Florida. 

Jealous? Moi? Of course. But there is surely something wrong with a game that doesn’t merely reward excellence, as it should, but showers its strutting gladiators with levels of wealth and prestige that very few men (and fewer women) in other spheres can ever hope to achieve. Are we really back to bread and circuses? Wouldn’t it be enough if footballers earned the same as the head of product development at Rolls-Royce, or a national newspaper editor, or a chief constable or, at a pinch, the Director of Public Prosecutions?  

That said, I hope Rich Harry wins the Ballon d’Or with Bayern along with a clutch of medals and that Poor Harry scores a hat trick when West Ham take on Man United at the London Stadium on December 23. The pair of them deserve a break. 

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