by The drummers in the Juice beat out a tribal rhythm. Out on the pitch Bayern Munich’s players unleashed wave after wave of ferocious attack, the crowd at the Allianz Arena cheering and cheering them on. And if you close your eyes and try not to think too hard, you could imagine that these were other times, better times. That everything was okay in the end.
They are not, of course. Bayer Leverkusen are on the run with the Bundesliga, coach Thomas Tuchel is out for the summer, and there’s a good chance around a third of their underperforming squad will leave with him. But still, the stolen glance of a truncated dream they dare to return their sight. Bayern are still in the Champions League. They still have unfinished business and a front four you’d walk through the thick snow to see. And they still have Harry Kane.
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It would be ironic if it was Kane – a man who had never won a trophy in his life – who pulled this group of serial medal winners and hereditary champions over the line. It was his 32nd and 33rd goals of the season that sent them into the quarter-finals here, along with another consummate European performance from Thomas Müller, and the more Bayern asserted themselves the more Lazio began to look ninth. best team in Serie. A.
And if Bayern manage to negotiate the next three rounds and make their way up the ladder of Wembley’s royal box, they can reflect on the two minutes that turned this tie upside down. No sooner had Ciro Immobile missed a glorious free header from six yards that would have put Lazio 2-0 up on aggregate, than Kane headed Bayern ahead on the night from Raphaël Guerreiro’s scuffed shot. These are the edges, these are the moments. And Bayern knows better than anyone that when it gets to this stage of the season, you take your little strokes of luck where you can find them.
Müller added a second goal just before half-time, watching Matthijs de Ligt’s screeching etch, Kane finished off the quick counter-attack by beating Leroy Sané’s pared shot, and in truth Bayern could have a fourth or fifth to score. But more important than that was rediscovering what might have been her old arrogance: the swagger and poise and certainty that had been so conspicuously absent lately. Bayern’s big teams were killed without thinking. Everyone knew their jobs. Everyone knew how it was going to end.
“We managed to be focused and disciplined over 90 minutes,” said Tuchel, walking with a slight limp after kicking a box during his pre-match speech and breaking his toe. “We didn’t do anything crazy either, we waited until the gaps opened up and we had a better understanding of when to accelerate and when to take risks. In the end it looked easier than it was.”
Also, let’s be real: Lazio were pretty disappointing here. Maurizio Sarri’s game had carefully nurtured them through 130 minutes of this tie, and it was going pretty well: defending in numbers, counterpunching through the speedy Felipe Anderson and the bustling Immobile. But when they had to make the run, they seemed to evaporate into the night. Anderson was a one-man whirlwind on the right wing and Luis Alberto was probably the busiest of the trio in midfield, but they finished the night without a single shot on target.
In desperation, Sarri made three substitutions at the time, withdrawing the captain, Immobile (206 goals for Lazio in 329 games), for the Argentinian face Taty Castellanos (two goals in 25 games). And in fact this was a kind of narrative, redolly on the way to Lazio who struggled to change equipment this season, to find different ways to win. No team in Serie A this season has earned fewer points from relegation.
But as Lazio tried to open up the game, pushing the full backs higher and trying to play more ambitiously through midfield, something felt off. The spacing was all wrong, the relationships were all wrong, and suddenly Bayern were back in their comfort zone: winning the ball high and feasting rampantly on the open spaces.
For Bayern, there is no doubt that tougher tests lie ahead. Too many of their big players – Joshua Kimmich and Manuel Neuer still spring to mind – are still fading away, barely performing enough. The defensive pairing of De Ligt and Eric Dier look vulnerable against teams who run at them quickly. But while there is still light, there is still hope.
“Nights like this can really change the season,” Kane said. And for Bayern this was a night of healing, to turn the page, to dream wildly again.
