Harry Kane Didn’t Score at Mainz — He Set Up Everything Bayern Got

Mainz handed Harry Kane a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Champagne before kickoff on Saturday, a thank-you for the Ballon d’Or he won last month. He spent the next ninety minutes showing them the version of his game nobody gives prizes to.

Bayern won 2-1 at the MEWA Arena, and Kane scored none of it. He made both goals. Fourteen minutes in, Jae-sung Lee’s pass missed its man in midfield and Kane was on it, picking out the completely unmarked Joshua Kimmich at the edge of the box. Kimmich smashed it under the crossbar — the game’s first shot on target, struck at 108 kilometres an hour, and his first league goal of the season.

That goal carried more than the lead. Kimmich had returned from bereavement leave last week after the death of his father, and he was visibly emotional in the celebration. “Naturally, the moment I scored, that was the first thing that came to mind,” he said. “Besides, I don’t score that many anyway.”

The afternoon’s other history belonged to the man in Bayern’s goal, and it turned on him before half-time. Manuel Neuer started his 550th Bundesliga match, becoming Bayern’s oldest-ever player at 40 years and 225 days, on his 394th league appearance for the club. He had only just come back from the foot problem that had cost him matches this autumn, returning for the 2-0 Champions League win at Atlético Madrid in midweek. Five minutes before the break, Nadiem Amiri’s free-kick glanced off Jonathan Tah, Neuer could only parry it into Lee’s path, and Lee headed in — then watched a long VAR review wipe the goal out for offside. Neuer had hurt his right foot in the scramble. Jonas Urbig replaced him before the interval.

On Sunday, Bayern confirmed the diagnosis, and Reuters carried it the same day: a partial tendon tear in the right foot, out “for the time being,” no return date given. Bild reports something like two months. This in a season Neuer has strongly indicated will be his last, with his contract up in the summer. Bayern go into the break top of Germany, and the goal now belongs to a 23-year-old understudy for the weeks ahead.

The second goal arrived on 57 minutes, and it was Kane again. Konrad Laimer’s long ball found him in behind; Robin Zentner blocked the shot, the rebound sat back at Kane’s feet, and instead of forcing a second attempt he squared it for Lennart Karl. The teenager, who had scored at Atlético in midweek, tucked it away — goals in back-to-back games for the first time since last December.

Mainz’s only shot on target all afternoon was Phillip Tietz’s header in the third minute of stoppage time, from Benedict Hollerbach’s cross, and it made the last seconds louder than they needed to be. The numbers underneath the scoreline were not close: Bayern outshot Mainz 26 to 11, put nine efforts on target to one, held 68.8 percent of the ball and completed 717 passes at a 90.9 percent clip. Mainz away is a genuine trap for this team — Bayern had won only two of their previous six league visits there — and they walked out of it with their 31st straight unbeaten away match in the Bundesliga, the third-longest run of its kind in the league’s history.

Kane’s season is the odd shape at the centre of it. He has four league goals. He has gone three league games without one, a run that includes the penalty he missed in the 2-2 draw with Dortmund a week earlier. Nobody in the Bundesliga has taken more shots than his 43, and ten players have scored more goals. What he leads is the other column. Bundesliga.com’s own counter has him joint-top of the assist chart on seven; Opta’s counter gives him eight — more than any player has managed through nine matchdays since Opta began recording assists in 2004-05, and already as many as he has ever produced in a full Bundesliga season. He signed his new contract, through 2029, on Thursday. Kimmich, who handed Kane the captain’s armband when he came off late, explained what Bayern think they have kept. “He’s won the Ballon d’Or, but he’s still willing to do absolutely anything for the team,” he said. “He’s someone who’s always there for every team-mate, and that’s really special.”

Bayern did it short-handed, too. Vincent Kompany missed the game through illness, so assistant Aaron Danks ran the bench. Jamal Musiala, Luis Díaz, Serge Gnabry and Ismael Saibari were all absent, though Musiala is back in team training and will spend the break building toward a return. Dortmund kept pace on the same afternoon, Felix Nmecha scoring twice from outside the box in a 2-1 win over Elversberg that got twitchy after Noel Futkeu pulled one back late. RB Leipzig’s 5-2 against Augsburg leaves them three points behind the top two. Bayern and Dortmund are level on 21 points, both unbeaten, separated by goal difference alone — plus 20 against plus nine — a week after drawing 2-2 with each other in Munich.

The league stops now. Bayern come back on Friday November 20 at home to Köln, with Urbig in goal and the assist column where their season is quietly being run from. Dortmund go to Mönchengladbach the next day. Neuer’s race is different — the reported two months of rehab against a farewell season that does not wait.