Mauricio Pochettino has admitted it will be impossible to force Harry Kane to stay at Tottenham if his star striker ever has designs on a big-money move away.
Liverpool finally sold Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona for £145million this weekend, months after the Brazil playmaker first decided he wanted a switch to Spain.
And Pochettino says that sort of situation would be the reality for Spurs too if Kane’s head is ever turned.
It will be tough for Tottenham to keep Harry Kane if he wants to go, says Mauricio Pochettino
The Spurs boss cited the departure of Philippe Coutinho as an example of how tough it is
Kane, who scored an incredible 56 goals in 2017, has been regularly linked with interest from Europe’s big guns but has stuck with boyhood club Spurs.
Pochettino wants to match the England centre forward’s ambitions, allowing him to lead Tottenham to their first trophies in over a decade and spend his rest of his career in north London.
But he concedes it would be tough to keep his best player if he wants out.
‘It shows how difficult it is to keep players,’ the Spurs boss said of the Coutinho deal after his side’s 3-0 FA Cup third-round win over Wimbledon.
‘Liverpool is one of the best clubs in history, in the world, and look when Coutinho or a player like Coutinho wants to leave, how difficult it is to keep your best player.
‘I think Liverpool wanted to keep him but it is difficult to keep him, and look what happened with Cristiano Ronaldo with Manchester (United), (Zinedine) Zidane with Juventus, (Luis) Figo with Barcelona.
‘There is a lot of examples that it is so, so, so tough for everyone to keep your best player if the player in some moment turns their mind and says “now I want to leave”.
‘If another club pay the type of money they pay, like it was with Barcelona and Liverpool, how you stop it?’
Kane has drawn the attention of some of Europe’s biggest clubs but is a boyhood Spurs fan
Coutinho left Liverpool to join Barcelona in a deal worth £150m despite the club’s reluctance
Asked specifically about Kane, Pochettino said: ‘I think Harry is special, so special, because he loves Tottenham and he feels Tottenham.
But we need to be careful and be clever how we manage him and then the player needs to choose to stay here, you cannot force everyone to stay here.
‘I think our job is to try to work together and to try to achieve all that we want, the club, everything that we will for the club. Of course, Harry is a special player.
‘I told him he seems like (Francesco) Totti in Italy, only a few players so special can spend their whole careers in one club. And I think Harry is this type of player, but in football you can’t be sure of anything.
‘That’s why it’s important to work together and try to achieve all we want. This present in Tottenham, this future in Tottenham, this project is exciting and I hope we spend a lot of time here, try to win trophies and achieve all we want.’
Pochettino hopes Kane is fully invested in the project at Tottenham and stays for the long haul