Has Luis Díaz Already Earned a Starting Spot at Bayern?
Luis Díaz didn't start against Aston Villa. He didn't need to. Twenty minutes off the bench in Bayern Munich's 2-1 win in Hong Kong was enough to turn a scrappy pre-season fixture into a referendum on the team he's about to join full-time.
The numbers from the night belong to Kim Min-jae, who opened the scoring in the 37th minute, glancing home a Tom Bischof free-kick. But the moment everyone left Kai Tak Sports Park talking about belonged to Díaz. Introduced in the 63rd minute, he had a shot cleared off the line by Tammy Abraham before finally beating Marco Bizot in the 73rd, a curling finish off the underside of the crossbar that Goal.com credited with winning him the match's official man of the match award.
That's the case for the attack. It shouldn't be the whole conversation.
Villa spent most of the night pinned back, and Bayern racked up 16 shots to Villa's eight, according to Fotmob's match data. But Joao Gomes still found space to pull one back from outside the box in the 83rd minute, and by Fotmob's own account, Villa didn't generate their first real second-half sight of goal until the 82nd, a full 45 minutes into that half. When a struggling Villa side, missing captain John McGinn and new signing Alejandro Garnacho to injury, can still carve out that kind of look against a Bayern side controlling the game, it's worth asking what happens when the opponent isn't rebuilding.
Kompany also had the luxury of resting Harry Kane and Michael Olise, both still working back from World Cup duty, which flatters the front line's depth more than it stress-tests the back line. Manuel Neuer had to bail his defense out twice in the closing stages, denying Abraham from close range after Bizot had already produced a double save at the other end to keep Villa in the match.
Díaz has made the argument for himself. One goal off the bench against tired opposition shouldn't hand him a starting shirt outright, but it's the kind of impact a new signing is bought to deliver, and he delivered it inside 20 minutes. The bigger question facing Kompany this season isn't whether Díaz starts. It's whether a defense that keeps letting stretched opponents back into games can hold up once the fixtures start meaning something.
