Harry Kane
The annual saga of Kane’s future has once again reared its head, though this time the dimensions are rather different. The six-year-deal that Kane signed in 2018 was always the ace in Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy’s pack, but as that enters its final year holding on grimly to the club’s prized asset, their best player since Gareth Bale was cashed out a decade ago, becomes less viable. Interest from Bayern Munich, willing to pay £80m to buy a striker to replace Robert Lewandowski and admired by the coach, Thomas Tuchel, at least prevents Kane flourishing at a Premier League rival. Kane is said to be keen but Levy is not known for taking big decisions at anyone’s pace but his own.
Kylian Mbappé
By the closure of this summer’s transfer window, there is the possibility that Paris Saint-Germain will have shed all three kings. It would bring to the end one of football’s most ambitious yet flawed projects. Lionel Messi is in Miami, Neymar waits on suitors but Mbappé, at 24, is the player who might yet carry on the PSG dream but appears unwilling to do so. Links with Real Madrid stretch back to his Monaco days but for anyone to take on the scorer of a hat-trick in December’s World Cup final would need a similar financial fair play-busting deal to the €180m one that took him to Paris in 2017. Were a Qatari consortium to buy Manchester United, perhaps that would bring them into play but Madrid seem most likely, if complicated. The latest from France is that failure to sign a new contract will put him on the open market.
Declan Rice
At various times linked with Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, it came down to a bidding process between Arsenal and Manchester City for West Ham’s captain. A price of £100m had been quoted all season and City’s late interest in the midfielder forced Arsenal’s hand in agreeing a deal that will eventually cost them £105m. City, as has been their pattern of behaviour in bidding processes, put in a take-it-or-leave-it bid of £90m and stepped away once that was rejected, moving on to other targets with Celta Vigo’s Gabri Veiga at the top of their list, available for a rather cheaper €40m release clause.
Mason Mount
A player who seemed destined to replicate the career path of John Terry and be his club’s leader for a decade or more, has instead followed in the footsteps of another former Chelsea youth product and youthful captain, Ray Wilkins, back in 1979, in heading to Manchester. Mount, a mainstay of the 2021 Champions League-winning team, left his boyhood club after his wage demands did not meet the low-wage, long-contract approach of the Todd Boehly regime. Cashing out a youth product for £55m looks good on the financial fair play ledger, a not necessarily welcome byproduct of those regulations. Mount, wanted by Erik ten Hag for his energy, has much to prove after two indifferent seasons.
Victor Osimhen
Aside from Kane, the other major striker heading the wanted list is the Nigerian whose goals fired Napoli to a first Serie A title since the days of Diego Maradona. Napoli’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, is one of the sharpest operators in the business, signing up players to contracts that make it difficult for rival clubs to pick off their talent. The widely coveted likes of Dries Mertens and Marek Hamsik saw out their best days in Naples, and a player who cost €80m from Lille in 2020 will not be surrendered cheaply. There is no buyout clause with Osimhen, as has allowed Napoli’s star Korean defender Kim Min-jae to join Bayern Munich.
