It’s been very difficult to judge the talent to come out of Tottenham Hotspur’s academy in recent years.
Indeed, Spurs have had a number of young players come through who were meant to be stars only to never reach their potential.
Alex Pritchard was meant to be brilliant, Oliver Skipp was tipped for massive things, while Marcus Edwards was seen as a top talent.
None of those players quite made the grade at Spurs. However, Spurs have had one huge academy success story in recent years – Harry Kane.
Kane is a world-class player these days, and after winning his first career trophy, he’s earning all sorts of praise.
However, Kane wasn’t always on this path to greatness.
Indeed, according to Steven Caulker, writing on LinkedIn, Kane wasn’t one of the best players in Spurs’ academy.
Tottenham had better academy players than Harry Kane
Caulker shared a post congratulating Harry Kane for his Bundesliga win with Bayern Munich.
Caulker was the year above Kane as he came through at Spurs, and, interestingly, the centre-back says the striker was not one of the best players in the system.
Indeed, according to Caulker, Kane wasn’t even one of the top five players to come through the Tottenham academy around that time.
Caulker would reel off a list of players who also came through at the time, suggesting that Kane was not best in class.
What happened to Tottenham’s other young stars?
Caulker listed a number of Spurs academy stars who he came through with at that time.
Of course, none of those players have gone on to hit the heights of Harry Kane, but it is interesting to explore what’s happened to those players in recent years.
| Tottenham’s young stars of the early 2010s | Where are they now? |
| Kyle Walker | AC Milan, on loan from Man City |
| Kyle Naughton | Retired |
| Danny Rose | Retired |
| Ryan Mason | Assistant manager at Tottenham |
| Jake Livermore | Free agent |
| Tom Carroll | Reading |
| Steven Caulker | Turkish Super Lig |
| Alex Pritchard | Turkish Super Lig |
| Nabil Bentaleb | Lille |
Kyle Walker has become a star, Kyle Naughton and Danny Rose’s playing careers are over, while Ryan Mason’s playing career was sadly cut short by injury.
Jake Livermore isn’t officially retired, but he’s been without a club for nearly a year now, while Tom Carroll is at Reading.
Alex Pritchard is over in Turkey, as is Steven Caulker, while Nabil Bentaleb is still playing top-level football in France.
To say that a handful of these players were supposed to be better than Harry Kane at youth level is interesting, but, as Caulker says, mentality can often get you further than pure talent in football.
