Tucked away in Wednesday’s edition of Marca is a column which explains why Real Madrid signing Harry Kane wouldn’t be a good idea.
José Vicente Hernáez says he feared Kane would score a couple at the Bernabeu and somehow trick Florentino Perez into signing him next summer.
Perez could have fallen in love with the idea, and also seen the commercial benefit of signing an English star.
Hernáez says: “I am still left with what the great Santiago Bernabéu said, that every champion team must have at least one Argentine, one Brazilian and no English. Or does anyone know anyone who has really triumphed away from their natural habitat?”
As is usually the case in football, the problem boils down to money. If Spanish footballers would have to take a significant pay cut to leave their own country, there simply wouldn’t be so many outside of Spain.
There’s a reason leagues around the world are peppered with Brazilians, and that’s because sometimes a player can earn more in a far flung, even unglamorous, country than they can at home.
English football is almost certainly harmed by the influx of money chasers, who are rightly following their best career path, and yet it’s still almost certain a reasonably talented youngster can earn more at a Premier League club, with the carrot of playing, or in the Championship, with the reality of playing, than they could at, say, Eibar.
It’s all about money.
English football would benefit from a wave of players moving to clubs around Europe but that’s simply not going to happen when the move would likely involve a significant pay cut.
Just like in England we’ve learned to scoff at Engerlund comments from the likes of Paul Merson, lazy and ignorant in his superior outlook, people like José Vicente Hernáez don’t seem to be far behind.
England has a problem with developing excellent young talent into the top level product, and that’s often down to playing time, but that doesn’t make it right for Hernáez to dismiss Tottenham’s Kane and base that upon an argument which doesn’t really stand up.
