The Bundesliga champions at last have the wide forward they've been craving, and he could hardly be more suited to complementing their No.9
Bayern Munich have long been in the market for a new left winger to raise the ceiling of their team. It's been five years since the electric wide duo of Serge Gnabry and Kingsley Coman helped fire them to Champions League glory, and though they both remain at the club, they are not the offensive weapons they once were.
There were sceptics in Bavaria when Bayern decided to drop £51 million (€60m) on Crystal Palace's Michael Olise last summer, but he has gone someway to silencing them after a spectacular debut campaign at the Allianz Arena. What became clear throughout 2024-25, though, was that they still needed another attacker in their ranks.
In Bayern's dream world, they would have landed Nico Williams. Much like Barcelona, they were left disappointed and probably a little shocked that he decided to sign a new 10-year contract at Athletic Club instead. They were also after Florian Wirtz, but baulked at Bayer Leverkusen's nine-figure asking price, while Paris Saint-Germain have no intention to sell Bradley Barcola.
That's led them to Luis Diaz, who has been given the green light to leave Liverpool for roughly £65m ($87m). Again, there are some question marks over the deal, but they ignore one of the most significant aspects of it – this will get the best out of star striker Harry Kane.
Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱AFPNearly crossed paths before
This is not the first time that a club has had plans to pair Diaz with Kane. During the 2022 winter transfer window, Tottenham head coach Antonio Conte and director of football Fabio Paratici saw the Colombian as the ideal third prong of an attack which also featured eventual Golden Boot winner Son Heung-min. Spurs were close to a £50m deal, but Liverpool, who had earmarked Diaz as a summer target, swooped into action to get their man.
"We like pretty much everything about him," Jurgen Klopp said after completing the signing. "I've followed him for a while – exceptional. Skillset and character. Really happy we could get him in now. His story so far is a special one. I like that. Now he's one of us. We can't wait to welcome him here."
Even though the north Londoners seemed content with Juventus' Dejan Kulusevski as their alternative option, it would have been interesting to see Diaz and Kane together at the peak of both of their powers rather than towards the latter stages of their respective physical primes.
AdvertisementAFPSurprise hit
Diaz impressed Liverpool's coaching staff so much that he was immediately thrown into the line up upon arrival, and he started 12 of their remaining 16 Premier League games as the title race with Manchester City went to the wire, while he was also in the XI that began their Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid.
"It was one of the best first games I saw from a new player," Klopp said of Diaz's debut in a 2-0 win over Leicester City. "Last night was a good opportunity to start him with Sadio [Mane] not back and Mo [Salah] coming back from an intense tournament. Luis showed up."
That was the extra wrinkle to Diaz's decision to join Liverpool – he was having to compete for a place in the line up with club legends and established Premier League performers. Salah's position on the right was unquestionable, while Mane and Diogo Jota had switched between the left wing and centre-forward slots for much of the 2021-22 season. In fact, Diaz was widely credited for allowing Mane the extra freedom to play through the middle, given his work rate and willingness to effectively do the dirty work of two players.
Getty Images SportMane warning
Yet Mane's trajectory from the moment Diaz touched down at Anfield serves as a cautionary tale. Six months on from Diaz joining, the Senegal star called time on his Liverpool career in search of a fresh challenge, and Bayern bit the £35m (€41m) bullet to acquire his services.
There was no obvious sign that Mane was in steep decline, especially during a year in which he finished second in Ballon d'Or voting, but his short spell in southern Germany proved a nightmare. He failed to reach double figures for goals or assists (seven and five, respectively, in 25 games) in the Bundesliga, while his most meaningful contribution towards the back-end of the 2022-23 season was getting himself in a bust-up with team-mate Leroy Sane following a Champions League defeat at Manchester City.
"Something like that can happen," Mane said of that incident. "It happened. We were able to solve this small problem. Sometimes it's good to solve problems, but maybe not in this way. That's behind us now."
However, Mane was never able to recover his standing at Bayern. "He's a player that needs a lot of encouragement," then-club chief Oliver Kahn said shortly before the forward's exit. "He's not used to the type of competition for places we have here. It wasn't like that at Liverpool." On August 1, 2023, Mane was sold to Saudi side Al-Nassr, and nobody at Bayern was left too heartbroken about it.
Getty Images SportKane's evolving game
If Mane is the example that Bayern should be worried about whe it comes to a potential Diaz drop-off, then Kane is proof they needn't be too concerned. After all, the England captain arrived at the Allianz only two weeks after the Senegalese attacker left, with the reputation of ageing Premier League forwards in Germany at its lowest, and yet he's gone on to be a success after his record £85m move from Tottenham.
In 96 appearances for Bayern so far, Kane has chalked up 85 goals and 26 assists, averaging more than a contribution every game, while he is also the first player in Bundesliga history to finish as top scorer in their first two seasons.
Kane, for his part, has diversified his skillset during the second half of his career. He was once at risk of becoming an injury-prone 'what if' after suffering three major ailments – two ankle sprains and one torn hamstring – at Tottenham. Jose Mourinho and Conte, though not remembered favourably by those of a Spurs persuasion, sought to unlock an extra element to Kane's game by negating how much pressing he had to do, instead dropping deeper to combine with his fellow attackers and release them having created space for them. He became the world's best outright number nine and false nine in doing so.
Kane has already struck up fine relationships with Olise and Jamal Musiala, the latter of whom will miss at least the first half of the season with a broken leg and ankle. Vincent Kompany has built an attack which will be feared all over Europe, and now has the last piece of the puzzle in Diaz once everyone's fit.
