It was a massive night for Bayern Munich in their maiden Champions League group stage match of the season, thumping Dinamo Zagreb 9-2 at the Allianz Arena. It was Bayern’s largest ever win in the competition and they were once again spearheaded by a four-goal outing from England skipper Harry Kane. Elsewhere, goals came from Michael Olise (2), Raphaël Guerreiro, Leroy Sané, and Leon Goretzka.
Having gone into the break 3-0 up, the writing was already on the wall for Vincent Kompany’s side to go on and win in triumphant fashion, but they had to survive an early scare when Zagreb scored two goals in as many minutes to start the second half. Sven Ulreich came on for Manuel Neuer at the break and made a crucial stop when it was 3-2 to spare Bayern’s blushes before Kane netted Bayern’s 4th goal on the night and tilted momentum back to the Rekordmeister.
Despite a complete team performance, Kane was the man of the hour with his four goals, a tally that saw him become the highest ever English goal scorer in the Champions League. He now has 33 goals in the competition and surpassed Wayne Rooney’s previous mark of 30. “Whenever you’re in a conversation with Wayne Rooney it means you’re doing something well. He’s one of the greatest English players and one of the best players there was in the game. It’s a nice achievement,” Kane explained after the match to UEFA tv (via @iMiaSanMia).
This was also Kane’s second consecutive hat-trick, having bagge three goals in Bayern’s 6-1 Bundesliga win over Holstein Kiel in the Bundesliga last weekend. Since he has joined from Tottenham last summer, Kane has now recorded a total of 6 hat-tricks for Bayern and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down any time soon. After the big win over Zagreb, he admitted that he does like to hang on to the match balls he collects after scoring hat-tricks. “I keep all the balls after hat-tricks, the lads might be sick of signing them but keep them coming. My son Louis, he loves playing football right now, he’s only three but I’ll take it home and put it next to his bed and he’ll be happy when he wakes up in the morning,” he jubilantly admitted.
Need to hear more about Bayern’s historic win? Well, you can listen to Cyler break down the game from a tactical perspective on the Bavarian Podcast Works Postgame Show. Listen to it below or on Patreon (ad free) or Spotify.
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