Harry Kane has been taking the Premier League and Europe by storm over the last few years – but even after bursting onto the scene, some still doubted his abilities.
The Tottenham frontman has firmly established himself as one of the world’s top strikers, scoring over 100 league goals since his emergence in the 2014/15 season.
Kane scored 31 goals across all competitions that campaign and has gone from strength to strength since, leading to him being named England captain.
But not everyone saw his rise to stardom coming, and any players of Football Manager might have noticed a few years ago that Kane’s rating didn’t quite match his real-life stature.
As FM’s PR Manager Tom Davidson explained on the Level Up! podcast, they hadn’t quite anticipated the rise the Spurs frontman would enjoy – which led to an awkward apology to the man himself.
“I think the one player we’ve ever apologised to about getting it slightly wrong was Harry Kane,” Davidson said.
“When he had his breakthrough season at Spurs where he really took it to another level, we were like ‘okay, we’ll adjust him slightly’.
“It took us a couple of years to catch up to where he’s got to in terms of his goal-scoring ability.
“When our researchers were looking at him when he was on loan at Norwich, (Leyton) Orient and Leicester, he wasn’t quite the player that he’s turned into.
“We sort of had him rated as potentially getting some minutes off the bench for Spurs, or becoming a decent Championship player, but never being the main man and leading the line for England.
“We met him at an awards do and said ‘we’re really sorry, we underestimated you for a little while!’
“I’m glad to say we’ve got him pretty much spot on for FM20!”
