Harry Kane Considers MLS and NFL Double Act for Later Career

Harry Kane has spoken about becoming an NFL kicker before. This time, though, there was a little more substance behind it.

The Bayern Munich striker says he wants to explore the idea seriously towards the end of his football career and has even floated the possibility of playing in Major League Soccer and the NFL at the same time. Kane is thinking six months to a year of specialist kicking work first, potentially followed by an MLS move and then, if everything somehow lines up, a second career in American football.

Speaking with England ahead of their Nations League meeting with Spain, Kane explained that years of taking penalties at least give him some experience of producing a clean strike when quite a lot depends on it.

“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.”

He also pointed to the pressure involved in penalty-taking as one of the few obvious areas of crossover.

“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.”

Kane is realistic enough to know that being very good from 12 yards does not immediately qualify you to start hitting field goals from 50. He said he would want between six months and a year of specific training before attempting the switch, which sounds considerably more sensible than simply turning up at an NFL camp with an England goals record and hoping for the best.

There is also more precedent than you might expect.

Brandon Aubrey spent four years playing football at Notre Dame before Toronto FC selected him 21st overall in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft. His professional football career was over by 2018, but several years later he retrained as a placekicker, reached the USFL with Birmingham Stallions and was signed by the Dallas Cowboys in 2023.

He has since become one of the best kickers in the NFL, including setting records from long range, and his route shows that the basic skill can transfer. It also shows how much work sits between being able to strike a football cleanly and doing the same thing with an American football while a defensive unit is trying to get through you.

Kane would not even be the first professional footballer to make that jump. Austria international Toni Fritsch left Rapid Vienna for the Dallas Cowboys in 1971 having never played American football competitively and went on to spend more than a decade in the NFL. He won a Super Bowl in his first season and later earned Pro Bowl and All-Pro honours.

So the idea itself is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Doing both sports at once is where Kane may have slightly more negotiating to do with the calendar.

“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.”

MLS runs from February into November, with the playoffs taking the season further, while the NFL begins in September. There would therefore be months of crossover rather than a tidy handover from one sport to the other. If Kane genuinely wants to play both, somebody is going to need a very understanding strength-and-conditioning department.

All of that still feels a long way away.

Kane is 33 and coming off the most prolific season of his career, scoring 73 goals in 65 appearances for Bayern and England. Sixty-one of those came for Bayern, while his league form also saw him become the fastest player in Bundesliga history to reach 100 goals, getting there in just 98 appearances.

He is now in his fourth season in Munich, has won back-to-back Bundesliga titles and says talks over a new Bayern contract are progressing well.

“We’re in good talks. We’re fairly close. There’s still some things that we need to iron out. I’m happy there.”

For now, Bayern still have rather more immediate plans for Kane’s right foot.

But whenever the goals finally stop coming in Munich, England or wherever football takes him next, he appears determined to make sure it does not get too much time off.