“This stadium brings back bad memories but I hope to be able to replace them with good ones,” Harry Kane had said on Monday night, and 24 hours later this was a start. A small step, perhaps, towards coming back on 5 June and having a second go at winning the Champions League in the arena where he lost the 2019 final. On his first European outing since winning the Ballon d’Or, the England captain was unable to score but he and his Bayern Munich team defeated Atlético Madrid, fellow semi-finalists from last season. They did so in a way that suggests that their candidacy this season is serious.
It may not have been sparkling but they had been superior almost from the start, dominant in physique and football. This is a team with few weaknesses, intense and impressive throughout. All Atlético could do was resist and it never truly felt like they would be able to do that for ninety minutes; ultimately, they lasted 54. That was when Lennart Karl scored the first. The superb Konrad Laimer then added the second on a night when they racked up nineteen shots. It had been heavy going for a while, and they had been made to wait, but in the end Bayern were just that bit too good.
Although it began with Julián Alvarez bending a shot just wide after 115 seconds, the best picture of the first half was probably the Argentinian’s second shot nineteen minutes later. If that first effort had come from the edge of the area, the chance presenting itself, the second came from the edge of the centre circle, deep inside Atlético’s half and was not so much about opportunity as the lack of them. True, Manuel Neuer was a long way off his line but Alvarez was seventy yards away and his shot never really took flight and was never likely too either, drifting wide.
It was hard to avoid the conclusion that he had gone for it out of a kind of impotence, a desire to do something, anything. Atlético were given so few chances to get near to Neuer’s goal and not very many to get near the ball. There was one moment when a Marc Pubill cross almost reached Alexander Sørloth who couldn’t duck low enough to reach it at the far post, and another when the Norwegian momentarily seemed to have escaped Dayot Upamecano. That, though, was about it. He cut a large and pretty lonely figure.
Bayern reached the break with almost 70% of the possession, so much of it in a ten or fifteen metre strip along the front of the Atlético area and occasionally inside it. Diego Simeone’s side were gradually pushed further and further back, the frustration of not being allowed into the game growing. And yet that frustration was shared and this had become something of an exercise in patience for both sides: in fact Simeone may have felt some satisfaction at how few spaces his team had allowed Bayern, who prodded and poked and very occasionally got up and running but didn’t find a way through.
Kane was in the middle of many of Bayern’s moves and appeared at the sharp end of them a couple of times. He teed one up for Karl to shoot over, the opportunity opening up for the 18 year old, and had two sights of goal himself. Leaning back, on the turn, Kane volleyed one wide from seven yards. The other came from a similar position when Laimer’s cross had reached Alphonso Davis at the far post. On the turn once again, Kane’s effort was superbly blocked by David Hancko. Josip Stanisic put one wide and Laimer, far more winger than defender, also scuffed a shot when it appeared he was in.
Mostly Bayern were not in, Atlético holding them at the gates. The doubt was always how long that could last, Jan Oblak having to save from Joshua Kimmich just thirty seconds after the restart. Tellingly, that was the keeper’s first stop but Bayern continued. When Tom Bischof stopped a momentary Atlético counter and found Kane soon after, the England captain came in off the left and shot just wide. And then, just nine minutes in, Atlético opened the door they had previously kept locked. Bischof’s deflected shot fell at the feet of Robin Le Normand and Pubill. Neither took responsibility for it; rather they got in each other’s way. Karl took it from them and smuggled it past Oblak.
The game changed there, or appeared to, and Simeone did too: the three substitutions – Lee Kang-in, Koke and Ademola Lookman all came on almost immediately – played their part but perhaps it was more about approach than players. Atlético started to play, get on the ball, and on 65 minutes a smart move and clever ball from Alvarez saw Marcos Llorente turn inside the area and draw a first save from Neuer.
Not that the production was prolific and the risk – the reality too – was that it would also afforded Bayern a little of the space they had been denied before. They seemed to enjoy that, Michael Olise soon sending Laimer up the right wing to fire wide. Atlético meanwhile could not match them. Next Kane shot over. Then Upamecano ran through from deep and struck a deflected shot that hit the bar.
The goal that ended it followed when Davis robbed a tiring Llorente, Kane clipped a neat pass to Laimer on the right and the Austrian had the cool needed to wait for Hancko to slide across to block a feigned shot that didn’t come and then, his dummy bought, smash a shot into the top of the net. There was still time for one more Kane effort, his fifth. That went over but this was done and there will be other days; maybe, he will hope, the biggest day of all, back here again.
