Many Chelsea fans will still consider former Tottenham striker and now Ballon d’Or winner Harry Kane an arch-rival. Kane scored eight goals in 22 appearances against the Blues for Spurs.

Kane left the Premier League in 2023 and has since become a Bayern Munich legend, helping them win two consecutive Bundesliga titles while breaking several goalscoring records. However, the England captain’s career could have taken a very different path, as he was once heavily linked with a move to Stamford Bridge.

How close Chelsea came to signing Harry Kane from Tottenham

Chelsea were regularly linked with a shock move for Tottenham’s Harry Kane, as the Blues lacked a world-class centre-forward for years after Diego Costa’s exit in 2017. Their interest appeared to peak in 2021, following Kane’s controversial interview with Gary Neville, in which he effectively admitted he wanted to join a bigger club.

Chelsea had just won the Champions League under Thomas Tuchel without a top striker and believed Kane could take them to the next level. With the England captain leading the line, Tuchel’s side would have felt confident of challenging for the Premier League title.

Chelsea’s official website even published reports linking the Blues with a shock move for Kane. In June 2021, the club’s media team wrote: “our success in the Champions League could potentially be tempting for the striker.”

Tuchel later revealed that Kane was never particularly close to joining the West London club. The England captain ultimately stayed at Tottenham for another two years, avoiding a controversial move between the London rivals before eventually leaving for Bayern Munich.

“We never had a list with his name on it and I never went to Marina [Granovskaia] to tell her to buy him,” Tuchel said at the time. “There are many people around players, their agents and advisors and people in between, so we had some information from these people, but it was never that close.”

Who knows whether Kane’s career would have followed the same trajectory had he joined Chelsea instead of Bayern? However, one can only imagine the Blues would have been more competitive during their difficult recent years with a striker capable of scoring over 50 goals a season.