IAN LADYMAN: Harry Kane cruises through and is left with few regrets as Bayern Munich and Man United remain European rivals in name only

• Manchester United have been knocked out of the Champions League 
• Kingsley Coman’s goal inflicted a one-goal defeat on United at Old Trafford 
• Back off Erik ten Hag! Insipid Man United performances are on the players – not the manager – Listen to why on It’s All Kicking Off

For Bayern Munich and Harry Kane, the margins of the bigger picture extend some distance down the road. All the way to hopes of a Champions League final at Wembley next June.

This was a night that mattered to the German team only in terms of pride and self-image, neither of which are insignificant in Bavaria. Stretching a run of unbeaten group stage games to 40 was clearly important to them.

Bayern are champions of Germany and despite some recent problems – they lost 5-1 at Frankfurt at the weekend – can expect to be so again by next summer. In Europe, however, they have some repairing of reputation to do.

To say Bayern were well beaten by Manchester City in last season’s quarter-finals is an under-statement. They were taken apart in a first leg they were lucky to lose 3-0 and that night in Manchester said everything about how far standards had slipped, even if everything is relative at this exalted level of the game.

Like their opponents here, Bayern’s standing in Europe means everything to them. It forms a crucial part of their identity and it was with this in mind that Kane was lured from Tottenham last summer.

Harry Kane set up Kingsley Coman to score the winner for Bayern Munich at Old Trafford

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Kane, the England captain, moved to Germany for medals. Bayern signed him as part of a more specific plan to win one trophy in particular.

Neither were at their best here on another sobering night for Manchester United. Even so, Kane still managed to play a sublime outside of the foot pass for Kingsley Coman’s crucial goal while Bayern’s dominance of the ball and the territory ensured that Erik ten Hag’s United team enjoyed only one spell of superiority in the game and, coming at the start of the second half, it lasted about 12 minutes.

So as United head to empty midweek schedules and a Premier League season that is already lurching like a holed liner, Kane’s European adventure continues to unfold in front of him. They say he really would have preferred to come to United than head to Germany on leaving Tottenham. 

Had he waited a year until his Tottenham contract ran out, he could done so on a free transfer. 

But regardless of all that, it’s unlikely Kane harbours regrets about the decision he made.

Kane spent the whole of his Spurs career during this relentless period of United’s decline. Even so the 30-year-old may well have been surprised at the limpness of United’s challenge here. 

This was a game that United really had to win to have any chance of progressing in the Champions League. 

Yet their football was more befitting of a Saturday afternoon early round FA Cup game against a team from a lower division.

The England captain was not at his best but he was still a level above the Man United players

This is a football club whose history has been constructed in part around European football and the triumph and desperate tragedy all that has entailed. 

Here, though, United were tame, lame and entirely to blame for an exit from this competition that has looked possible ever since the night they succumbed in Munich on match day one.

Where was United’s energy here? Where was their intensity and their courage and their commitment to going down with a fight? Left in the dressing room? On the training field? Or buried deep and unrecoverable inside a genetic code that seems to have disappeared they day Sir Alex Ferguson turned the key to his office door for the last time more than a decade ago?

Before this season, United last played Bayern in Europe in the spring of 2014. David Moyes was only days from the sack, it turned out, but even that performance – in losing a quarter-final second leg 3-1 in Germany – was better than this. United were spirited that night and even led at one stage.

There was none of that here. Bayern played a strong team for what was effectively a dead rubber for them – credit to Thomas Tuchel for that decision – yet controlled the pace and flow and the rhythm from the outset.

Kane wears number nine for Bayern but his role is exactly the same it is for England and was for Tottenham. Playing as the central figure of three attackers, Kane is a ten as much as he is a nine, spending time in deeper positions to dictate play and exhibit his excellent passing range.

You have to see Kane play in the flesh to really see and understand this properly. It is something not always obvious when games are watched through the narrow focus of a TV camera lense.

Kane joins in the celebrations after Bayern extended their unbeaten run at Old Trafford

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Kane was not as his best but his standards rarely drop far below those which many footballers in the modern game would kill for. His understanding of the patterns of a game of football comes naturally to him. So does an appetite for hard work and an energy reservoir that never seems to empty. Some of United’s current players could learn much from all of this.

His pass through to goalscorer Coman was beautiful in both anticipation, thought and deed. Soon after he should have scored with a header and that he didn’t will irritate him.

How many United players, meanwhile, would have gone to bed awash with self-recrimination on Tuesday night? It’s a fair debating point.

Standards continue to fall through the floor in this part of Manchester. United and Bayern remain European rivals in name only.

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