In the 3-0 win over Freiburg on Sunday, Harry Kane (30) stood out as more than just an assist man. Thomas Tuchel explains the slightly different approach.
You actually have to go back a whopping seven months to find two club games in a row in which Harry Kane has not scored. The former Tottenham striker, who had scored 13 goals in his last 14 Premier League games, took his run to Munich in the summer and scored eight times in his first six Bundesliga games, plus in the Champions League opener against Manchester United (4-3).
Now, in view of the personal lull in Copenhagen (2:1) and against Freiburg (3:0), one can already speak of a tangible crisis for the attacker. No, of course not. Because even apart from his own goals, Kane’s efforts to find his way better into the Bavarian game from game to game are clearly visible.
In Copenhagen last week, it took until the closing stages before Kane underlined his value to the team after a thoroughly poor 70 minutes, setting up Mathys Tel’s 2-1 with his header extension to Thomas Müller and drawing important fouls in the closing stages.
Now on Sunday, it was noticeable that Kane was more involved from the start, acting as a steady face-off station and even dropping into defensive midfield time and again. “That’s what we wanted today,” coach Thomas Tuchel explained when asked. “We had the two tens high in the field and Harry deeper. He was involved in a lot of actions to speed up the game because we then had good running routes at his back. That’s what we wanted, and he did that well. That’s also something he likes – then he’s more in the game, more involved. “
After just eight minutes, Leroy Sané could have made better use of Kane’s fine volley and finished, but in the 25th minute, Bayern’s best player had no trouble putting his congenial partner’s cross into the net for 2-0. Kane collected his fourth Bundesliga assist and thus already his twelfth scoring point in his seventh appearance.
The only thing that didn’t go right against Sport-Club was his own finishes, with the Englishman twice firing low past the far corner from almost identical positions on the half-right in front of the penalty area. “The two shots on goal he had were very dangerous, so I’m not worried about that,” Tuchel said later. The coach never tires of mentioning that Kane is still far from 100 per cent.
