‘It crushed me’ Former team-mate shares memories of Ballon d’Or winner Harry Kane’s rise
2026 Ballon d’Or winner Harry Kane made light work of his competition as a young player at Tottenham Hotspur, a former teammate at the North London club has admitted.
Spurs legend Kane scored 213 goals for the club in the Premier League, leaving in 2023 as the league’s second-highest goalscorer. His move to Bayern Munich laid the foundations for back-to-back Bundesliga titles, to 61 goals in 51 matches in 2025/26 and, ultimately, to the Ballon d’Or.
Kane played for Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich City and Leicester City before establishing himself as an all-time Spurs great and England great.
‘He overtook us like a rocket’
According to Spanish striker Roberto Soldado, who played for Spurs between 2013 and 2015 just as Kane was emerging from his proving expedition around other clubs, the signs were there from the start.
Soldado told Deportes COPE Valencia via Sport Witness: “He’d come up to train with us, and in training you’d see him finish and you’d say, ‘Damn, this kid.’
“We played in the Premier League, the Europa League, and the FA Cup and Carling Cup. The kid would come on, get minutes, and score goals, and score goals, and score goals.
“It crushed me, it crushed me. He kept earning more and more minutes in every competition, and well, he overtook us, like a rocket.
“Those of you who knew he was something special weren’t wrong, because look, even now, and it’s been quite a while, he’s still a world-class striker.”
Soldado, now 41, is as good a judge as any. The Valencia-born frontman was seldom truly prolific but offered enough presence to build an impressive career that took him from Real Madrid, Getafe and Valencia to Spurs, and on to Villarreal, Fenerbahce, Granada and Levante.
He scored more than 200 league goals in his career and scored seven times in 12 appearances for the Spanish national team, albeit in a period spanning six years. Soldado had stiff competition at international level too.
Kane was voted the best footballer in the world and collected the Ballon d’Or trophy at the end of a glittering ceremony on Monday night.
The 33-year-old England captain scored six times on the way to the World Cup semi-finals, adding some international credibility to a phenomenal season in front of goal for Bayern.
Since leaving Spurs, Kane has scored 156 times in 159 appearances in all competitions and has won Germany’s Bundesliga twice. Bayern also won the DFB-Pokal last season. Kane scored all three goals in the final against Stuttgart in May.
