The trophy hunt isn't over for Harry Kane just yet. A brace from the England captain and Bayern Munich remain alive in the Champions League, a few more months for this talented but ill-balanced side to clamber out of the canyon they seemed intent on digging for themselves last month. Even after the disastrous run that cost Thomas Tuchel his job and almost certainly ended a decade-plus of Bundesliga hegemony, there is just that scintilla of something that makes you want to believe that Bayern could be a serious contender.
Those ludicrous expected goals (xG) figures. The sheer weight of talent that can be deployed in the final third when everyone is fit, beautifully knitted together by the Kane-Jamal Musiala tandem. A cadre of veterans who know how to win, marshaled by a head coach with a track record of excellence in this competition. Even on Tuesday, Bayern did not look like a team whose ceiling is Champions League winners, their propensity for clumsiness waiting to be exposed by anyone better than Lazio (anyone with a realistic chance of making the quarterfinals).
On paper, this was the sort of comprehensive 3-0 victory over middling opposition that Tuchel so often trades in at this stage of the Champions League. The possession battle was won 59% to 41%, the shot count 24 to 5, more than three expected goals for Bayern and a little over half of one to Lazio. Across the tie as a whole, this has the look of a Bayern beatdown to it: 4.2 non-penalty xG to them, 1.5 to their opposition to go with the one moment of bafflement when Dayot Upamecano handed Ciro Immobile a penalty and his teammates a one-man disadvantage.
In the Champions League, it is not quite so simple as just scrubbing out the rashness of Upamecano in the aggregate. The moments matter much more in cup football and Bayern just have too many of them that make you go "yikes." Their midfield is too easily ploughed through. Their center backs look like strangers because they so often are. The talent distribution seems too lopsided, a few too many 10s and eights, not enough fours and sixes. The return of a few more of their wide options from injury might give Tuchel more room to experiment but the big-picture issues with squad building are writ large across this side.
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Not so large that they could not finish off a Lazio side who are ninth in Serie A for a reason. A flurry of long-range efforts early on dragged Maurizio Sarri's defense out of its penalty area, opening up the sort of pockets in which Kane and Thomas Muller thrive. Both turned home close-range headers in the first half, the latter turning a goal of the tournament volley off the right boot of Matthijs De Ligt into an assist deserving of a more elegant finish. Kane's 28th Champions League goal came in the second, Leroy Sane's shot parried into his path. Even three goals to the good with two-thirds of the match played, Bayern did not look entirely secure. It must have been a familiar experience for their No. 9, fearing that his teammates at the other end of the field might, at a moment's notice, fritter away the advantage he had earned for them.
Kane finds himself in a higher-spec, more luxurious version of a very familiar vehicle. When Bayern crunch through the gears in attack there are few that can stop them but they can rarely do that while retaining control at the other end of the pitch. That has infuriated their manager since the day he arrived. It is a problem that obsesses him but he has not come close to solving. Whether that is on those who recruit the players or those who coach them is a matter of perspective. It is precious little surprise that Bayern's board concluded it was the latter but they would do well to ask themselves one question. If Thomas Tuchel cannot stop opponents driving through the space in the center of their pitch that ought to be occupied by their midfield, who can?
As early as the fifth minute Matteo Guendouzi powered up the field before driving a shot wide. More often than not Lazio's counters and brief sallies didn't result in any great danger on the Bayern goal. There was enough sloppiness in the hosts' backline -- one that seems to change by the game yet somehow always find space for Eric Dier -- to invite hope for a fairly ordinary Lazio side. Moments before Kane revived Bayern's hopes, Ciro Immobile went close to snuffing them out when he headed wide off a Mattia Zaccagni cross that De Ligt had clumsily flicked in his direction.
The inability to recruit a true ball-winner has been a bugbear throughout the manager's brief tenure, nothing in his squad truly seems to satisfy the 50-year-old's obsession with security in and out of possession. The 19-year-old he has settled on, Aleksandar Pavlovic, may not be a natural destroyer in midfield but he did all that could be asked of him and a fair bit more, a brilliant block on Luis Alberto denying Lazio a lifeline soon after Bayern's third. He lacks some of the authority in the duels of Europe's best-sitting midfielders but he passed neatly and brought some predictability to this high variance side.
Even combining Pavlovic with Leon Goretzka in midfield brought with it complications. Joshua Kimmich had been pressed out to fullback with Sacha Boey and Noussair Mazraoui out injured but whatever position he is in, the 29-year-old is the tempo setter for Bayern. No one registered more final third touches than Kimmich nor did anyone create more than his four chances. Better teams than Lazio will have a great deal more success exploiting the Bavarians' right flank than Sarri's side did, no matter how often they attempted to spring into the space behind the fullback.
That rather typifies the problem that Bayern face in the final months of Tuchel's reign. No matter what he tries, there almost certainly isn't going to be a side that fulfills his twin desire for security and threat. The pursuit of silverware might roll on into the spring but it seems a matter of when not if Kane's first season in Germany peters out.
