Academy director says it was Brad Friedel who spotted Harry Kane’s talent at Tottenham

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Academy Director Alex Inglethorpe has admitted it was Brad Friedel who first spotted Harry Kane’s talent at Tottenham Hotspur.

On the We Are Liverpool Podcast, Inglethorpe – who knows works for the Reds – shared the story about his discovery.

Inglethorpe was a coach at Tottenham for six years between 2006 and 2012.

In that time, he worked under the likes of Juande Ramos and Harry Redknapp, before moving to Liverpool.

He now holds the position of Academy Director at Anfield, and has been nurturing their young players for a number of years.

The emergence of Stefan Bajcetic this season is the latest success delivered by Inglethorpe.

He has now shared the bizarre story of how Brad Friedel discovered how good Harry Kane as a youngster at Tottenham.

The goalkeeper was coming to the end of the career while at Spurs, but suddenly saw something in the now record goalscorer.

He even compared him to a Liverpool legend, who he has now surpassed for international and club goals.

Friedel highlighted Kane talent at Tottenham

Inglethorpe shared the story of how Kane was discovered by Friedel at Tottenham and said: “So, at 14 years of age Harry [Kane] wasn’t anywhere near the top of the group.

“I think anyone at Tottenham would say even at 16, you thought, ‘good player’, at 17, ‘I like him’, at 18, ‘yep’.

“There’s a good story in this. At Tottenham, it was Brad Friedel that got us all thinking about Harry.

“One day after training, he’s sat myself and John McDermott who was academy director at the time.

“He said, ‘Young lad Kane, he finishes like Fowler, he’s got the same finishing technique as Robbie.’

“Now obviously Brad had been at Liverpool and worked with you [Fowler], and at that moment, we looked at each other and thought, ‘Oh, we knew he was good’. There’s no better compliment.

“From that moment, it was almost like there was a slightly different light shined on him, because of that reference that Brad had given him at the time.”

Kane went on to have loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester City before finally breaking into the first-team.

Freidel will happily take the credit for discovering Kane at Tottenham, although the likelihood is he’d have made his way into the first-team anyway.

The American goalkeeper apparently has a hidden talent for discovering young players!