ESPN Brasil often interviews former Premier League players who have good stories to tell about their time in England.
On Wednesday, they published a nice chat they had with former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Sandro Ranieri, who spent four years at the club.
Interviewed by reporters Francisco De Laurentiis and Vladimir Bianchini, the 28-year-old talked about the rise of Harry Kane in his early years at White Hart Lane.
According to the midfielder, the striker was never taken very seriously by Spurs, who took a long time before believing he was going to be the real deal for the club.
“Tottenham didn’t count on him very much, he was always on loan,” Sandro told ESPN Brasil. “He did very well at the academy, I always followed his games and Kane was the highlight, but when he went up to the first team, it took a lot for him to be used.”
A problem for Kane was that he was still a youngster coming from the youth ranks, while Tottenham supporters wanted the big names to be scoring goals for the club.
“Besides that, the fans of the club always called for the signing of big strikers, then in a year came Adebayor, Soldado in the other, there was Defoe, I also played with Pavlyuchenko… They brought striker after striker, and the guys wouldn’t give him an opportunity.”
“But he was seen only as ‘an academy boy’, so they did not give him much weight. Today I even understand, because to play for Tottenham you have to be ‘flying’. He was new, so they thought he needed to pick up experience in other places, so he would come and go.
“But then he started doing some cup games, like the Europa League, FA Cup, and he scored a few goals here and there, and I thought, ‘Cool, look at Kane scoring a goal’. He started to get more and more strength inside the group, and it was clear that the time was coming for him to explode.
“There was a time that Tottenham stopped signing strikers because we had Adebayor, Soldado and Kane, but Soldado wasn’t scoring goals and dropped to third option, and Kane went up to second. Every time he’d come in he’d score his goal, so he turned into the direct sub of Adebayor.
“But then Adebayor fought with the board and stopped playing. Kane was already asking for a place and started to start. I already had the confidence because he was loved by the squad. He started to score goals and since then he hasn’t stopped.”
Sandro still claims to be a big fan of Kane, especially for all his efforts to become the player he is today.
“Kane, I define in one word: Worker. All he does is a matter of training and confidence. Since when he was young me and Gomes spoke of him:. ‘Damn, the kid is impossible, is training very well.’
“He used to call me to mark him in training because he knew I gave everything in all the works. ‘Come, Sandro, mark me I will come up on you (laughs).
“Sometimes the other players would look at each other and make a banter, ‘Look Harry Kane… Poor guy, he thinks he’s going to play.’ It was as if they wanted to say: ‘I’m going to play’ and he stays there just training.
“Glad to see his start. By the way, in the first game that Kane did, he came right into my place. Sky Sports did this story the other day and I did not even remember it! So I can say I’m marked in his story too (laughs).”
“I’m very happy for everything that happened to him, because he’s a very humble and hard-working guy, he deserves to be at that level, because the status he reached was not something overnight. He came evolving each season and now he’s on top of the world.”
