Champions League: Bayern Munich 3 Lazio 0 (3-1 on aggregate)
The drummers in the Südkurve beat out a tribal rhythm. Out on the pitch the players of Bayern Munich were unleashing wave after wave of feral attack, the crowd at the Allianz Arena swaying and baying along with them. And if you closed your eyes and tried not to think too hard, it was possible to imagine that these were other times, older times, better times. That everything was going to be all right in the end.
They’re not, of course. Bayer Leverkusen are running away with the league, coach Thomas Tuchel is off in the summer, and there’s a sound case for swilling out around a third of his underperforming squad with him. But still, the stolen glance at a truncated dream that dares to return their gaze. Bayern are still in the Champions League. They still have unfinished business and a front four you would wade through thick snow to watch. And they still have Harry Kane.
What an irony it would be if it was Kane – a man who has never won a trophy in his life – who dragged this bunch of serial medallists and hereditary champions over the line. It was his 32nd and 33rd goals of the season that put Lazio to bed here, either side of another consummate European performance by Thomas Müller, and once Bayern had asserted themselves in the tie there was little the ninth-best team in Serie A could offer in response.
And of course when it gets to this stage of the season you take your little strokes of luck where you can get them. Kane’s crucial opening goal came immediately after Ciro Immobile had missed a glorious free header for Lazio that would have put them 2-0 up on aggregate. Given Bayern’s current state of distress – about to relinquish their Bundesliga title after 11 years and searching for a new manager in the summer – it’s not entirely clear how they might have fought back from that point.
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But the great Immobile missed from six yards, and less than two minutes Aleksandar Pavlovic was clipping a diagonal ball into the right channel towards Müller. All night long this had been Bayern’s major source of pressure, Joshua Kimmich and Leroy Sané dovetailing to good effect but the final ball so often lacking. This time, however, Müller cleverly headed the ball backwards, wrongfooting a well-set Lazio defence and setting up Raphaël Guerreiro for a clear shot. Guerreiro’s strike was scuffed, Kane opportunistically thrust a head at the bouncing ball, and Ivan Provedel should probably have kept it out. No matter. Bayern had rescued their season in less than the time it takes to boil a kettle.
The noise level rose. Jamal Musiala nudged a glorious chance wide from seven yards. And in those minutes Bayern seemed to locate something they had long mislaid: something you may as well call the old arrogance, the swagger and the stillness and the sense of certainty with which they would dismantle teams.
In the dying minutes of the first half Lazio, who had looked uncertain all night under the set piece, failed to clear a corner from the left, Matthijs de Ligt’s screaming volley was glanced in by the head of Müller, and finally it felt like Bayern could breathe again.
All of a sudden, the gameplan with which Maurizio Sarri had carefully nursed Lazio through 130 minutes of knockout football needed a rethink. Felipe Anderson was a one-man whirlwind on the right wing and Luis Alberto was probably the busiest of their midfield three, but in order to break the cycle of sitting deep and trying to build punchy, direct counterattacks, they needed the ball. And Bayern were in no mood to give it to them.
With half an hour to play, Sarri chanced his hand on a triple substitution, with captain Immobile (206 goals for Lazio in 329 games) withdrawn for the Argentinian forward Taty Castellanos (two goals in 25 games). And if there was a faint desperation to the change it was largely redolent of the way in which Lazio have struggled to change gears this season, to find different ways of winning. No team in Serie A this season has won fewer points from losing positions.
So as Sarri tried to open the game out, pushing the full-backs higher and trying to play more ambitiously through midfield, something just 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 rampantly feasting on the open spaces. Kane capped a four-on-three attack by tapping in Sané’s parried shot for his second goal. And even if Müller and Sané both went close to gilding the scoreline late on, Bayern had more than enough: not just to win, but to fleetingly dream themselves kings again.
- Guardian
