Harry Kane leads Jimmy Greaves' 80th birthday tributes at Tottenham

By Richard Cooke

Thursday 20 February 2020 10:25, UK

Harry Kane led the tributes to Tottenham legend and all-time record goal scorer Jimmy Greaves who turned 80 on Thursday.

Greaves scored 266 goals for Spurs in 379 appearances, including a club-record 220 league goals, between 1961 and 1970.

During his nine years at White Hart Lane he won two FA Cups and the European Cup Winners' Cup.

He previously scored a then club-record 124 goals for Chelsea between 1957 and 1961.

Greaves also scored 44 goals in 57 caps for England, although an injury in the final group game of the 1966 World Cup kept him out of the latter stages of the tournament.

Before Tottenham's 1-0 Champions League defeat against RB Leipzig on Wednesday Kane - who has scored 181 Spurs goals himself - presented a special gift to Greaves' son Danny and granddaughter Hannah.

It was a boxed Tottenham shirt with the number 80 on it along with the club's motto 'To dare is to do'.

A montage of Greaves' goals were shown ahead of the match and more memories were to be found in a special commemorative match-day programme.

Kane tweeted on Thursday: "Happy birthday to @jimmy_greaves! An honour to have presented his granddaughter and son with a gift at the game last night. Not the result we wanted but it's only half time #COYS"

Former Tottenham forward Clive Allen's father Les Allen was at the club when Greaves first arrived at White Hart Lane in December 1961.

"I grew up listening to my father telling me what a magnificent goalscorer he was, the best that he'd ever seen," Allen told Sky Sports News.

"He replaced my father here in '62. Obviously he broke every record there was so it was lovely that he was remembered and reaching his 80th birthday is fantastic."

Greaves suffered a stroke in May 2015 which has left him wheelchair-bound and with severely impaired speech.