MUNICH – Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane hopes that the 3-0 victory over Lazio on March 5, which secured progress to the Champions League quarter-finals, will be a “turning point” in the club’s season.
The German champions went into the match having won just one in five games, a run which included losing the first leg 1-0 in Rome and also caused them to fall 10 points behind league leaders Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga.
The poor run cost manager Thomas Tuchel his job beyond the end of the season, with the club and coach issuing a statement saying that he would end his contract early.
Kane, who has scored at a remarkable rate despite Bayern’s struggles, notched a brace in the win and now has 33 goals in 33 games in all competitions since arriving in the summer.
Speaking after the victory while holding the Man of the Match trophy and a schnitzel burger, he said that he hoped it was a “turning point for the rest of the year”.
“If we perform like that in most games we’re going to come out with a victory. It was a pleasing day,” Kane added.
“It’s been a good season so far in terms of the goals but, as a team, we know we can do better. I’m trying to help that situation, and I hope we can use this as a turning point to push on in the Bundesliga and see if we can put pressure on Leverkusen – and see who we can get in the next round of the Champions League.”
Tuchel, meanwhile, told Amazon Prime that he had injured his toe during his pre-match motivational speech.
“I don’t know if the players know about it, they might have wondered why I sat for 90 minutes, but that’s why. We’ve got very big goals and the minimum goal for all of us is the quarter-final,” he said.
Bayern veteran forward Thomas Muller, who scored the other goal, said that qualifying for the last eight was a “very important step” for the under-fire club.
The 34-year-old also said the win showed that the season was not over for Bayern.
“I’ve said it before – it’s not a complete shambles here, we’re sticking together off the pitch, we’ve just had a few footballing problems on it. We know how important it was to progress today,” he said.
While Bayern were focused on what they had to do, German police were also doing their jobs as they made an arrest after a group of Lazio fans were filmed doing Nazi salutes at Munich’s Hofbraeuhaus beer hall ahead of the match.
Fans of the notoriously right-wing club from Rome were captured late on March 4 making the gesture and chanting “Duce”, a name for Italy’s former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Nazi salute is banned in Germany along with other Nazi-related expressions, gestures and symbols.
On March 5, police confirmed that an 18-year-old Italian was “found and provisionally arrested” for performing the salute. They also said the fan was released after paying a four-digit security deposit.
A popular site for tourists, the Hofbraeuhaus was also where Adolf Hitler gave a speech at the founding of the Nazi Party in 1920.
A spokesman for the Hofbraeuhaus said the venue was unaware of the incident, but said “if any anti-constitutional or xenophobic behaviour has occurred, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms”.
Rome’s sports councillor Alessandro Onorato, meanwhile, said that the images of the Lazio fans were “shameful, they damage the image of the club, of all the supporters and of Rome”.
A section of the Lazio ultras, known as the Irriducibili, had previously faced punishment for making far-right gestures.
Two sectors of Lazio’s Olympic Stadium were closed for January’s match against Napoli after fans did Nazi salutes and made racist slurs against AS Roma striker Romelu Lukaku. AFP
