Luis Diaz was at the heart of every single talking point from Bayern Munich’s 2-1 statement win in the Champions League at Paris Saint-Germain, taking the German Rekordmeister’s win streak to start the season to 16 matches across all competitions.
In the first half, the Colombian winger scored a brace to put Bayern 2-0 up within the first 32 minutes. He first fired home a loose ball in PSG’s box after Harry Kane was played in by a clever flick from Serge Gnabry and for his second goal, he took advantage of Marquinhos being far too casual in the back, stripping the Brazilian of possession and firing into the bottom left corner.
After Lucho’s attacking heroics, his yellow card for an awkward challenge on Achraf Hakimi that led to what looked to be a serious ankle injury was upgraded to a straight red by referee Maurizio Mariani after consulting VAR. The extent of Hakimi’s injury made everything look worse upon every slowed-down replay of the challenge, but Diaz was certainly going for the ball after the two players had been in a tustle close to the touch line.
During the match, German referee Manuel Gräfe offered his experienced analysis on the red card incident. He took to his X account to give his take on what he saw:
Mariani & especially the #VAR were obviously influenced by the injury. Without the injury, it would have stayed a yellow, which you can also see from how many pauses the ref needed until he got to red… Díaz looks at the ball, narrowly misses it with his sliding tackle (left leg), but the problem is that he follows through with his right leg & makes a scissor motion on Hakimi, who actually gets injured as a result. Endangering a player’s health is a red & if it was actually endangered, meaning the player got injured, it’s bitter for Bayern, but then understandable red…
With the letter of the law, the endangerment of the player, Hakimi in this case, is what makes the decision leant towards a red for the referee after looking at VAR. The match was full of scrappy challenges that very well could’ve resulted in serious injuries with millimeters or milliseconds here or there, but such was the nature of the clash.
Jonathan Tah’s accidental stamp on Khvicha Kvaratskhelia could have resulted in a significant injury to the Georgian international, and likewise, Konrad Laimer was stamped on by Nuno Mendes, after which Josip Stanišić was also booked for dissent; the Croatian knew the challenge by Mendes was rash and could have injured Laimer. At the time, the PSG players were wanting to play on despite Laimer staying down. Again, in that instance between Mendes, Laimer, and even Joshua Kimmich, the tackle going slightly more one way than the other could have resulted in endangering one of the players and being looked at for a potential upgrade to red — the pendulum can always swing that way even with a relatively mundane challenge if it results in a significant injury and endangerment of the player being tackled.
Bayern Munich pulled out a wild 2-1 victory in a game that will be talked about quite a bit. So, why don’t we kick it off. This is what we have on tap for this edition of the Bavarian Podcast Works — Postgame Show:
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