Harry Kane dramatically ramped up his efforts to force through a move away from Tottenham on Monday when he refused to report for pre-season training.
The England striker is clearly determined his big money transfer, most likely to defending Premier League champions Manchester City, goes through this summer.
Kane is likely to be fined for skipping his first day back at Tottenham’s Enfield training base and risks damaging the esteem in which he is held at the club.
Harry Kane refused to report for training as he tries to force through his Tottenham exit
Kane is hoping to put pressure on Daniel Levy (right) to allow him to leave Tottenham now
However, it is a clear sign of his determination to join a club with a better chance of winning the trophies he so craves for his CV.
And besides, Kane is far from the first footballer who went on strike in order to force through a move.
Here, Sportsmail picks out some famous examples and what happened next.
Pierre van Hooijdonk
Everything should have been hunky dory at Nottingham Forest in the summer of 1998 given they’d just won promotion back to the Premier League as champions.
But striker Van Hooijdonk, who had just been at the World Cup with Holland, was dismayed to find key players were being sold, including his strike partner Kevin Campbell and club captain Colin Cooper.
Seriously unhappy, Van Hooijdonk demanded a transfer but this request was turned down by the club’s new owners. As a result, he went on strike and kept fit by training with former club NAC Breda in his home country.
Pierre van Hooijdonk celebrates alone after scoring against Derby after ending his strike
He’d scored 34 goals during Forest’s promotion season but his refusal to return to the City Ground destroyed all goodwill from fans and team-mates.
The extraordinary stand-off lasted until early November when Van Hooijdonk, realising that transfer wasn’t going to materialised, sheepishly returned to his club.
By the time he returned to the side, Forest were staring down the barrel of relegation and even half a dozen Van Hooijdonk goals couldn’t save them from dropping out the Premier League.
The Dutch striker refused to return to Nottingham Forest and trained with old club NAC Breda
Even when he scored against bitter rivals Derby, his team-mates refused to celebrate with him and it’s fair to say things remained pretty frosty.
After relegation, Van Hooijdonk finally got his move – to Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem.
Diego Costa
Despite scoring 20 goals to power Chelsea to the Premier League title in 2016-17, Diego Costa found himself effectively dumped by text message ahead of the following campaign.
Manager Antonio Conte wrote: ‘Hi Diego, I hope you are well. Thanks for the season we spent together. Good luck for the next year but you are not in my plan.’
With Alvaro Morata coming in for a £58million fee, it was abundantly clear that Costa would be playing less regularly in the season ahead.
Antonio Conte dumped Diego Costa with a text message ahead of the 2017-18 season
Rather upset, Costa returned to Brazil instead of continuing training at Chelsea as he tried to figure out his next move. He was determined to get back to former club Atletico Madrid despite interest from elsewhere.
When Sportsmail tracked Costa down on what was the opening weekend of the Premier League season, he accused Chelsea of treating him like a ‘criminal’.
‘I am waiting for Chelsea to set me free. I didn’t want to leave. I was happy. When the manager does not want you, you have to go,’ he said.
Chelsea left him out of their first team squad for the season and in late September he did finally get his wish to return to Atletico, formally linking up with them during the January window.
Costa did eventually get his wish to rejoin Atletico Madrid after an ignominious Chelsea exit
Thibaut Courtois
Sticking with Chelsea and goalkeeper Courtois, who spent the summer of 2018 trying to force through a move to Real Madrid.
Having been Chelsea’s first-choice stopper for four seasons, the Belgian suddenly announced he wanted to move closer to his children, who lived in the Spanish capital.
Chelsea dug in their heels and said Courtois would only be sold if they could sign a suitable replacement. So in response, the keeper just didn’t show up for training after the summer holidays.
Thibaut Courtois celebrates winning the FA Cup with Chelsea in 2018 – but a few weeks later he decided he wanted to leave for Real Madrid and didn’t show up for training
The Belgian did get his wish, joining Real in a £35million move at the beginning of August
It had the desired effect, with Real sealing a £35million transfer at the beginning of August.
‘Because the transfer was closed I did not show up because I thought it better not to disturb the team and the squad,’ he said by means of explanation.
‘If I did go there, I didn’t want it to be toxic, so obviously it is a pity because I love Chelsea.’
Carlos Tevez
A classic of the genre as Tevez refused to come on as a substitute with Manchester City 2-0 down to Bayern Munich in a Champions League game back in September 2011.
Manager Roberto Mancini was understandably furious and demanded the Argentine leave the club. ‘If I have my way he will be out. He’s finished with me. If we want to improve as a team Carlos can’t play with us. With me, he is finished.’
The club suspended Tevez for two weeks and he was then placed on gardening leave, heading back to his homeland.
Carlos Tevez infamously refused to come off the bench during Man City’s game in Munich
In the end, Tevez and manager Roberto Mancini buried the hatchet as City won the title
Everyone expected Tevez to be sold in the January window but, to general astonishment, he was reintegrated into the City side and returned to training.
As redemption, Tevez scored a series of important goals to help City towards their first Premier League title.
And he even stayed another season beyond that, scoring 17 times more, before joining Juventus.
George Best
New Year’s Day 1974 and Manchester United are hurtling towards relegation from Division One after a miserable 3-0 defeat at Queens Park Rangers.
Their fading superstar George Best misses the next training session citing personal reasons.
Despite returning the following day, manager Tommy Docherty has had enough of Best’s antics of drinking and partying and refused to pick him.
Tommy Docherty’s patient with George Best finally expired in 1974 when he failed to turn up for training. He would never play for Manchester United again
Best and Pele during a North American Soccer League match between the Cosmos and Aztecs
That was the final straw, with Best leaving Old Trafford and failing to turn up for training the following week. Docherty fined him two weeks’ wages and stuck him on the transfer list.
Best never played for United again but the dispute over his contract rumbled on for a further 10 months when he couldn’t play football until the club finally released him to join another club.
He wasn’t even 30, but Best’s career would never recover. He ended up briefly at Stockport County before stints in the North American Soccer League either side of a mini-revival at Fulham.
Gareth Bale
There is a definite sense of deja-vu here for Tottenham because Gareth Bale failed to report to training as he tried to secure a move to Real Madrid back in August 2013.
Daniel Levy was, as always, digging his heels in and refusing to accept Real’s world record bid of £86million for the Welshman.
The sticking point was over how Madrid proposed to pay for the deal, in instalments spread over three years. Levy demanded the full amount up front.
Gareth Bale skipped a training session at Tottenham as he tries to push through his Real move
With the transfer deadline drawing uncomfortably near, Bale didn’t report in for training when expected in an effort to speed up his move.
A series of injuries further muddied the waters with muscle and foot issues meaning he didn’t travel with the Spurs squad to any of their early season games.
The perception at the time was that Bale was reluctant to play and run the risk of picking up a worse injury that would see him fail his medical.
Bale’s move finally went through right before deadline and he would score 22 goals during his first season, helping Real win their 10th Champions League crown.
The ploy ultimately proved successful as he sealed a world record move to the Bernabeu
Dimitar Berbatov
Spurs were also on the receiving end of player activism when Dimitar Berbatov forced through his transfer to Manchester United in the summer of 2008.
United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was quoted by the newspapers as saying the club ‘expected’ to sign Berbatov, which he later backtracked on.
But Spurs issued a formal complaint to the Premier League, alleging United had broken rules and submitted a dossier of evidence.
Dimitar Berbatov was determined to force through his Man United move in 2008 and claimed he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to play for Tottenham
It went to the wire on deadline day but Ferguson got his man and Berbatov his dream move
The Bulgarian was determined to get his move to Old Trafford, however, and claimed he was distracted by the speculation and not in the right frame of mind to play against Sunderland.
Berbatov was fined a weeks’ wages as a result but persevered and refused to play in the next game against Chelsea too.
It succeeded in pushing through his dream move to United for £30.75million, albeit incredibly late on deadline day.
Dimitri Payet
Payet was an exceptional player for West Ham and much loved by the fans. He was named the club’s player of the year for the 2015-16 season but midway through the next campaign it all unravelled.
In January 2017, Hammers manager Slaven Bilic announced in a press conference that Payet no longer wanted to play for the club. He was then left out of their next matchday squad.
‘We have said we don’t want to sell our best players but Payet does not want to play for us,’ Bilic said. ‘We are not going to sell him.’
Dimitri Payet was brilliant for West Ham but rocked the club by demanding to leave in 2017
The Hammers tried to resist but Payet ultimately got his wish of a return move to Marseille
Sticking to their guns, West Ham rejected two bids from his former club Marseille but as the situation dragged on, the owners realised they had little choice.
Ultimately, a £25m offer from the French club was accepted with the money preferable to Payet sulking his way through games or continuing his strike.
‘To be frank, my board and I would have preferred for him to have stayed in order to make an example of him, as no player is bigger than the club,’ said co-owner David Sullivan.
George Eastham
Strikes in football are nothing new. Just look at the case of George Eastham, a midfielder for Newcastle United in the late 1950s.
The case of George Eastham led to reform of the transfer market in Britain
In 1960, he fell out with the club, saying the house they had supplied him with was uninhabitable, the job he had to work alongside playing was unsuitable and Newcastle were preventing him playing for the England under-23 side.
Eastham refused to sign a new contract when his old one expired and requested a transfer. Newcastle refused and held all the aces because in those days the clubs could keep a player’s registration, effectively blocking them from moving.
Eastham later said: ‘Our contract could bind us to a club for life. Most people called it a ‘slavery contract’. We had virtually no rights at all.
‘People in business or teaching were able to hand in their notice and move on. We weren’t. That was wrong.’
So Eastham went on strike and moved to Guildford, Surrey to help an old family friend sell cork. That job actually paid more than his Newcastle deal.
In the end, Newcastle relented and sold him to Arsenal for £47,500 in October 1960. But Eastham was determined to help his fellow footballers and took the club to the High Court in 1963.
Eastham won his case claiming it was an unfair restraint of trade to be tied to such contracts. It led to a reform of the British transfer market with the ‘retain’ element of ‘retain-and-transfer’ contracts reduced and the right to a player tribunal established.
Paul Scholes
It will surprise many to see Scholes, ever the consummate professional, on this list but he did refuse to play in a much-weakened United team against Arsenal in a 2001 League Cup tie.
United were going through a difficult patch of form, not least because Juan Sebastian Veron had been signed for £28m and Scholes was pushed forward into a withdrawn striker role to accommodate.
When Scholes was left out of a Premier League game at Liverpool, he told Alex Ferguson he wanted no part of the trip to Highbury, which ludicrously was rearranged for the next day.
Scholes told Sportsmail in 2011: ‘I don’t know why I did what I did in 2001, but it is something I really regretted doing.
Paul Scholes threw a wobbly by refusing to play in a weakened Man United side in 2001
‘I wasn’t in a great mood. I had been left out the Liverpool game the previous weekend and I knew that the team going down to Arsenal in the cup was basically a reserve side.
‘I just got a bee in my bonnet that I wasn’t happy with things. I had my reasons but it was stupid really.
‘I ended up getting fined and having to apologise, but I was lucky. The manager would have been within his rights to get rid of me.’
Alex Ferguson fined Scholes for his tantrum but he was soon restored to the United side
Ferguson tolerated Scholes’ tantrum but United crashed 4-0 to exit the League Cup. Eventually, Fergie would also acknowledge his Veron experiment had failed miserably.
Scholes, on the other hand, would go on to achieve brilliant success for another decade.
