At the centre of the ongoing will-they-won't-they dalliance between the United Kingdom and the NFL lies Tottenham Hotspur. The North London soccer club recently completed work on their billion-dollar new stadium, a project funded in sizeable part by - and deliberately designed to adapt to accommodate - the NFL.
The deal ensures that for the next ten years, two NFL games will be played at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium every year, in what is intended to be a mutually-beneficial arrangement. In guaranteeing a purpose-built venue in what is by far the country's biggest city, the NFL essentially guarantees itself a giant revenue stream from a consistently-keen British NFL fanbase that has built up over the generations, a deal that further gleefully exploits the hole left by the NBA's discontinuation of its own previously annual London regular season game.
Spurs, meanwhile, get paid to rent their place out for the occasional weekend in what is essentially the most expensive Airbnb rental of all time. Win-win.
This indelible link makes Spurs, and their stadium, the foundation of the NFL in the UK. And while they are not involved with this sideline of the business in any direct way, those who most represent the Spurs' business - that is to say, their players - will have a requirement to protect the business and support the partnership. None more so than their captain, Harry Kane.
In an otherwise flat-pack, self-assembly PR exercise on Good Morning America yesterday that he attended while dressed as a 24-year-old millionaire stockbroker not quite understanding the requirements of Dress Like A Cowboy Night, Kane was asked whether he would want to potentially try and make the NFL as some kind of kicker - presumably, a placekicker rather than a punter - at some point in his sporting career. It was not the first time Kane has floated the possibility, or that the possibility has been floated at Kane; nevertheless, he doubled down, and said yes, it is something he would like to explore one day. Still. Again.
In Kane's defence, when in someone else's house, it is the polite thing to do to entertain their ideas. Any answer along the lines of "no, that is a crazy idea" would be disrespectful and not taken well; any answer along the lines of "I intend to just focus on my career in the "other" football and perform as well as I can for club and country" would not make good television. He is playing the media game, if not the actual game.
That said, he probably means it. There is after all an absurd amount of money and prestige to come from succeeding in one of the world of sport's most specialist roles, and, for someone who has already demonstrated plenty of co-ordination and leg strength in his soccer career, there seems to be a foreseeable path to achieving it.
To the untrained eye, that is. Hall-of-Fame kicker Morten Andersen disagrees. He probably knows best.
Kane's path to the NFL is not entirely without precedent, albeit to a limited degree. After his lengthy soccer career came to an end, another former Tottenham striker, Clive Allen, briefly worked as a placekicker for the London Monarchs of the NFL Europe, and former Pro Bowl kicker Toni Fritsch started out as a soccer player, with a successful career that included scoring two goals against England at the very same Wembley Stadium site that Tottenham have just stolen the NFL away from.
However, neither of those two were chasing glory. Neither of those two had the Premier League all-time goal scoring record in their sights, every big team in Europe clamouring for their signature should they ever wish to leave, nor the burden of their national team's captaincy to deal with. His is not the type of career you walk away from for a flight of fancy, nor one which you end prematurely for a second career. Were absolutely everything to go right for Kane, perhaps he could make the NFL as a kicker in a few years time, were he to sacrifice the time he has left in his far more prestigious soccer career. But precisely because of that, he won't.
All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.