Kane looks past Bayern peak to sketch out life after football
Harry Kane has reignited talk of one of football's strangest crossover dreams, telling reporters at St George's Park on Wednesday that a future move to MLS could open the door to a parallel career as an NFL placekicker. The comments came as England prepared to host World Cup winners Spain in the Nations League on Saturday, with Kane, England's captain and currently in career-best form at Bayern Munich, using the pre-match media session to look years down the line rather than just at the weekend's opponent.
Kane, who turned 33 in July, is coming off a 73-goal campaign for Bayern that has made him a leading contender for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, and reports suggest he is "fairly close" to putting pen to paper on a new contract in Munich. That form makes the NFL talk feel more like distant ambition than imminent plan, but it is one Kane has now floated with real specificity for the first time.
Aubrey and Allen show the crossover pathway already exists
Kane's logic centres on his penalty-taking, arguing the technique and pressure translate directly to placekicking. He pointed to Dallas Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey, a former MLS-drafted player at Toronto FC now regarded as one of the NFL's most accurate kickers, as proof the pathway from soccer to American football is viable. Former Tottenham striker Clive Allen, who turned out for the London Monarchs in NFL Europe, offers an earlier precedent. Kane's own record lends weight to his case: a career built on precision finishing and clinical penalty-taking for Tottenham, Bayern and England, allied to a self-described long-time admiration for Tom Brady, gives the ambition more substance than a passing throwaway line.
Kane: 'The NFL is a lot more realistic than the golf one'
"Maybe if I am in the MLS in the future or somewhere like that it might be a thing where you could connect the two maybe with the seasons," Kane told reporters, via The Athletic. "That is something I will try and look at a bit more seriously. It all depends on what happens in my career over the next five or six years, the motivation and what I want to do. The NFL is a lot more realistic than the golf one, let's put it that way."
On the technical crossover, Kane added: "I take penalties and it is a very similar pressure, technique. If I did that, in terms of training, I would be closer to that more than any other sport. If I was to do it, it is something I would take seriously. I would take maybe six months to a year of trying to practice before."
Bayern deal and Spain test come first before any switch
Kane was quick to stress the dream remains firmly on the back burner while he is thriving in Europe. "If people know I am still on the top of my game here with football, it is not a conversation that would be had," he said, adding that at 33 he is "trying to extract everything I can" from the years he has left at the top. It is not a new fantasy — Kane first floated a "10 or 12 years" NFL timeline to ESPN back in 2019 — but with Bayern talks advancing and MLS increasingly framed as a realistic late-career destination, the pieces of a genuine two-sport plan are, starting to look connected.