Harry Kane left Tottenham in the summer of 2023 without a single major trophy. On Monday he collected the 2026 Ballon d’Or at the London Palladium, ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal, and became the first Englishman to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001. The three years between those two moments have turned into the loudest counterfactual in the English game.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Jamie O’Hara, himself a former Spurs midfielder and now a pundit on the channel, argued that Tottenham held Kane back during his decade at the club and that the entire side should have been built around the striker. The claim lands at an awkward moment for a club still trying to steady itself after a chaotic calendar year.
Carragher: no way at Spurs
Jamie Carragher has made the same case in blunter terms.
“There’s no way Harry Kane could’ve won the Ballon d’Or if he was playing for Tottenham,” the former Liverpool defender told LiveScore after Monday’s ceremony.
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Carragher pointed to Kane’s move to Bayern Munich as the structural change that pushed him into Ballon d’Or territory, with regular Champions League football and silverware around him.
Kane’s own numbers at Bayern support the point. According to Yahoo Sports, he scored 76 goals for club and country during the award year while helping Bayern win the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal.
No trophies in a decade at Spurs
Tottenham’s own tribute to Kane laid out, in the club’s own words, how much he produced in a shirt that never won him anything. He scored 280 goals in 435 appearances for Spurs, broke Jimmy Greaves’ long-standing club record in February 2023, and left for Bayern that summer. The club described him as “forever one of our own” and said that as its first academy graduate to win the Ballon d’Or, Tottenham “could not be prouder”.
That record, read next to his trophy cabinet in north London, is the data behind every pundit’s argument this week. A player with 213 Premier League goals, second only to Alan Shearer, finished his Tottenham years with nothing to lift.
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De Zerbi’s Spurs climb to 14th
The club Kane left behind has not stood still, though not always in the direction supporters wanted. Thomas Frank was appointed head coach in June 2025 and sacked on 11 February 2026 after eight months, with Tottenham 16th in the Premier League at the time of his dismissal. His successor Roberto De Zerbi inherited a side that spent much of September bottom of the table.
Back-to-back wins against Chelsea and Coventry City have pulled Tottenham up to 14th in the Premier League under De Zerbi, who said his players are improving in mentality and in their relationships as a group.
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