Welcome to Harry Kane, Bundesliga. Amid the kind of feverish, pyrotechnic atmosphere he rarely experienced in England, this was a lesson in what Bayern Munich’s league debutant knows better than almost anyone. He will not care that his 74th minute goal, the second in a straightforward win, took a slight deflection off Amos Pieper on its way; nor will he mind that Leroy Sané, whose opener he set up deftly, tops their early scoring charts. In the breaking of a duck, the shaking away of any approaching monkey, Kane showed at least one major trophy should be perfectly within his grasp.
That will be a certainty if all his domestic opponents are as weak as Werder Bremen, likely relegation candidates whose barren run against Bayern now extends to 15 years. But this was nonetheless the kind of bedding in, a smooth and frictionless display unmoved by the aggressive sense of place, that Kane craved. The past week has flown by but, a few ripples apart, it was hard to see a future in which he and his new teammates’ radars fail to align. “He is making all the players better as they see how attentive he is,” Thomas Tuchel said afterwards. It has only been seven days.
For all the home side’s perspiration, it ended up being the Kane show everyone outside Bremen had billed. While a scattering of interested passers-by had milled outside Bayern’s city centre hotel, the presence of fresh stardust was little concern for those who nursed pre-match glasses of Becks beside the Weser. They have seen the Bayern circus roll into town enough times before with all its trappings; they have usually watched it make off with the spoils, which had been the case on the champions’ previous 15 visits. If their lushly located home ground’s distinctive floodlight towers and bouncing stands, a throbbing mass of green half an hour before kick-off, offered a textbook Bundesliga experience then another resounding Bayern win would have the same effect. The aggregate score in those games had been 41-10.
It took Kane a little over three minutes to show he had been versed in recent history. He had already tried, with a cushioned pass, to play Kingsley Coman through when another glimpse presented itself near halfway. Werder’s defence was caught square but it still took cute vision, and an instinctive awareness of Sané’s give-and-go, to lay an instantaneous ball into the space. Perhaps it suggested a burgeoning relationship but it was also a reminder that elite players need little time to get the measure of each other. Sané tickled the finish past Jiri Pavlenka; the die was cast for the evening and, conceivably, an entire season.
The opposition may have been obliging but this was a laboratory version of the way Tuchel would like Kane to unlock the running, gliding, twinkling feet around him. Sané and Coman, operating to his right and left, should be free to wreak devastation if Kane drops to free them. The same goes for Jamal Musiala, who sliced through Werder repeatedly from a nominal No 10 position. Serge Gnabry missed the game with an injury and was barely missed; Bayern patently have the depth and incision to make the Kane formula work.
If Kane sought a degree of home comfort here he could find it, at a push, in one of the men charged with stopping him. The Werder lynchpin Milos Veljkovic made his debut for Spurs against Sunderland on 7 April 2014, the day Kane scored his first Premier League goal. Veljkovic cost £250,000 when he swapped north London for Bremen two years later; here he grappled with an old ally worth up to 400 times more, a touch-tight shadow when Kane dropped short for throw-ins or drifted to the left.
For all Bayern’s scything dominance there had only been one genuine opening for Kane before he evaded Veljkovic’s back line again and added what was, effectively, the clincher. At times he had looked slightly isolated when holding a classic centre-forward position, Bayern’s blur of movement out wide occasionally betraying a lack of creative poise. He had seen a first-half shot blocked and mistimed an unsighted header but soon after the hour a burst down the inside right and low, early shot were met by a fingertip save from the overworked Pavlenka.
Coman had rapped a post by that point and Bayern, the half-chances arriving regularly, needed a cushion. Their hosts had stirred since the interval, Leonardo Bittencourt and Niclas Füllkrug both miscuing. Füllkrug is a lo-fi analogue of Tottenham-era Kane: a strapping 30-year-old academy product who, via a couple of deviations, has made a fine career here and finished joint top scorer in last season’s Bundesliga. He has his own summer of transfer speculation behind him and those whispers will rumble on. But if this is Kane’s golden boot competition it was cast into the shadows with a drilled finish from 15 yards after Alphonso Davies had ripped up the left flank and offered the chance.
Six minutes from time Kane left the scene with what he later confirmed was cramp. Sané quickly added his second and then Mathys Tel, Kane’s replacement, added his own emphasis that Bayern just keep coming.
Shortly after Kane’s assist for Sané, the fans behind Weserstadion’s Ostkurve unfurled their response. “No player in the world is worth €100m,” read the banner, referencing the now infamous claim made by Uli Hoeness back in 2017. The Bayern executive has since had to eat his words; if their latest acquisition maintains this degree of flow, Werder’s faithful may have to swallow theirs.
