Wayne Rooney criticised Harry Kane’s assessment of Bayern Munich’s performance after he hailed their defenders in the thrilling 5-4 first leg against Paris Saint-Germain.
Bayern lost by one goal in a chaotic nine-goal epic at the Parc des Princes on a night where the quality of both teams’ forwards was hailed.
But Kane, who opened the scoring with a first-half penalty, instead chose to focus on his side’s defence in a post-match Amazon Prime interview.
‘Even though there was nine goals scored, there was some amazing defending out there in the 1v1 battles,’ Kane said.
‘You’ve got the best players in the world. The best attackers, the best defenders. Of course, sometimes the attackers are going to come out on top and show their quality.
Harry Kane and Bayern Munich’s players after their 5-4 defeat by PSG on Tuesday night
Rooney, working as a pundit, was not impressed with Kane’s claims in a post-match interview
‘When you go back and look at the centre-halves playing in midfield, in attack sometimes, out wide against the wingers, credit to them. It’s a really hard job. I thought they were outstanding.’
But Rooney thought his former England team-mate’s comments were nonsense.
‘Listen, I love Harry Kane,’ Rooney said. ‘But there’s no way he can be praising his defenders.’
Vincent Kompany’s men had a backline of Jonathan Tah, goalscorer Dayot Upamecano, Alphonso Davies and Josip Stanisic in front of Manuel Neuer.
‘Maybe because they are his team-mates he is trying to give them a bit of confidence for next week,’ Rooney added.
‘I think the defending from both teams tonight was really bad, so I think he’s being a bit modest there.’
Thierry Henry, meanwhile, said viewers should not care if the defending was poor.
Speaking on CBS he said: ‘We were saying recently that we were seeing teams that weren’t taking risks, players who weren’t dribbling, teams that were playing not to lose instead of winning. Tonight, there was a lot of risk-taking.
Kane was impressed with the quality of defending in the PSG 5-4 Bayern match
So if you were wearing your pro-defensive hat, yes, you might go crazy watching tonight’s match… But I don’t care.
‘We’ve been complaining for a year or two that football is boring, and this match wasn’t! If we leave the professional side of things at home, I had fun, and I think everyone at home had fun too. It was just crazy.’
French sports daily newspaper L’Equipe hailed ‘Football Total’ on their front page on Wednesday morning, while in Germany, BILD’s sports editor wrote: ‘Never before had there been so much amazement – and head-shaking in disbelief.’
It was another night of personal accomplishment for Kane, whose goal broke Steven Gerrard’s record by scoring in six consecutive Champions League appearances.
He also played a key role in Bayern’s stirring second-half comeback from three goals behind.
The return leg in Munich is scheduled for next Tuesday with Bayern and PSG fighting it out to face the winner of Atletico Madrid vs Arsenal – with the first leg of that tie taking place at the Metropolitano in Madrid this evening.
