Lothar Matthäus said a Robert Lewandowski extension would’ve been cheaper than Harry Kane pursuit for Bayern Munich

Will Harry Kane leave Tottenham Hotspur for Bayern Munich during this summer’s transfer window? That’s the hottest question on the transfer market right now as the Rekordmeister continues to try to convince Daniel Levy and Spurs to offload their star striker before he could potentially leave on a free transfer next summer when his current contract is set to expire.

He is in the hunt for Alan Shearer’s all-time Premier League goals record, but this could be one of Kane’s last realistic opportunities to leave Spurs and win silverware somewhere else, unless he were to opt to stay in England and wind up joining one of the top four clubs there.

For now, the Kane transfer saga is proving to be Leroy Sane 2.0 with how difficult it seems to be to get Tottenham to agree to sell. They’ve promptly rejected Bayern’s first two bids despite a bevy of reports suggesting Thomas Tuchel has already convinced the player to join Bayern and sold him on the overall package the club could offer him.

Former Bayern and Germany midfielder turned pundit Lothar Matthäus isn’t exactly a fan of Bayern’s relentless blockbuster pursuit of Kane, though. In a recent column for Sky Sports (via Abendzeitung), he wrote that he genuinely feels Tottenham and Levy won’t let Kane go for anything less than a fee “in the three-digit range.”

“If this performance is not achieved, he pulls it off and does not give Kane. I assume that,” he explained, which has bared truth with Tottenham rejecting Bayern’s firs two bids of under 100-million euros. “You knew from the beginning of the negotiations around Harry Kane that you would need a lot of patience,” he added.

Looking back, with all things considered, Matthäus said he feels it would’ve been far cheaper for Bayern to offer Robert Lewandowski a three-year contract extension and pay raise before he made his mind up on wanting to leave for Barcelona last summer. He joined the Catalan club for €45 million last summer after he had made it clear he did not want to extend his contract with Bayern. He had sign an extension back in August of 2019 that was set to keep him at the club until this past June, but he made it clear he did not want to fulfill that final year left on his contract.

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“f they had extended Lewandowski by three years at the time and given him a pay rise, it would have been cheaper than the past unhappy year plus the sum they now have to spend on Kane,” Matthäus argued, suggesting there was more that could’ve been done from Bayern’s standpoint to hold on to Lewandowski. If they had, they wouldn’t been in this desperate search for a top class, No. 9 striker like they are right now.

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