Luis Diaz's Struggles Amid Bayern's Triumphs
In a Bayern dressing room still humming from a 7–0 demolition of Union Berlin, the stories wrote themselves.
Michael Olise walked in with his first hat-trick for the club. Ismael Saibari had his debut goal for Bayern Munich. Serge Gnabry was back after injury. Harry Kane, clutching a gingerbread heart iced with a “100”, had just reached his latest absurd landmark.
“The coach had us give a few speeches in the dressing room,” Kane said just after midnight, the last Bayern player to leave the Allianz Arena. He rattled off the list of milestones with a grin, then joked that Olise’s address had been the shortest of the lot.
It was all laughter and light.
For almost everyone.
The odd man out in a night of joy
Luis Diaz slipped out in silence.
No quotes, no smiles, no gingerbread. Just the striker walking away from a night that, for him, felt like the fifth straight missed opportunity.
The contrast could hardly be starker. Around him, team-mates stacking up records and redemption arcs. Diaz, 29, stuck in a run where every chance seems to tighten the knot rather than untie it.
His last goal for Bayern? The 5–1 strike on the opening Bundesliga weekend against VfB Stuttgart. Since then: nothing. No goal, no assist, no real release.
The chances have been there. Against Schalke, against Osnabrück in the cup, against Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League – big openings, all wasted. The low point came last week in Elversberg. Olise slipped him clean through in the box, begging for a simple finish. Diaz chose tricks instead, a sequence of feints ending in a tame backheel. Josip Stanisic’s anger told its own story.
Against Union, his most dangerous moment didn’t even count. He finished off Bayern’s best move of the match so far, only to see the flag go up for offside.
Another game, another blank.
A broken promise and a growing weight
This run even made a liar of his own optimism. Before the match, Diaz had told Sky/RTL: “I think that goal will come in the next game. You also have to stay calm mentally so it does not weigh on you. The important thing is to keep working on it, to improve. I know that it is only the chance conversion. It is only the finish that is missing – and then it will be fine.”
The finish is still missing.
He will now have to wait until 10 October, away at FC Augsburg, for his next shot at stopping the clock on this drought. First come the international fixtures – without him.
Colombia coach Nestor Lorenzo, in agreement with Diaz, has left him out. Not as punishment, but as a pause. A reset after an exhausting year in which he played 51 times for Bayern, scoring 26 goals and adding 23 assists, plus 16 more matches for Colombia with seven goals and three assists.
Even at the World Cup, where he helped Colombia reach the last 16, his chance conversion had already started to wobble. Back in Munich, the issue has only sharpened. Against Union, he barely reached positions to miss from.
Yet the underlying numbers show just how often he has been there to fail. According to Sofascore, Diaz has already missed six “big chances” in the Bundesliga this season. After four league games, his expected-goals tally sat at 3.1.
The comparison inside his own dressing room is brutal. Kane has three league goals from an xG of 2.17. Olise, in blistering form, has four from 2.65 in the Bundesliga and eight goals plus three assists in all competitions. Saibari, who replaced Diaz in the 63rd minute against Union, has one goal and three assists in just 178 Bundesliga minutes.
Same team. Very different outcomes.
Did Diaz see this coming?
Deep down, Diaz might have sensed the danger.
In that same Sky/RTL interview, he admitted he would have welcomed competition for his place on the left. “Of course I always want to play. But if someone is there who can help in my position: welcome. That helps a lot when things are not going well. Then the team-mate is there to help you – and that way you alternate. That is very important. I would have liked it. But fine, it did not happen. We are still good as we are.”
Bayern’s hierarchy had also planned to bring in a back-up for him. Then, just before the transfer window closed, they loaned Arijon Ibrahimovic to FC Augsburg. The move surprised the 20-year-old and left Diaz as the only natural left-wing option.
Asked on Friday whether the club might revisit that idea in winter, given Diaz’s slump and the lack of depth on his flank, sporting director Max Eberl chose to answer with a question of his own.
“Where did Isi score his goal from today?” he said.
From the left side of the box, of course.
Saibari is not a classic winger – he does not have the pure speed for that – but his intelligence, vision and technique allow him to float across the frontline. Gnabry can also operate on the left. Kompany, with a squad full of attacking stars, will rotate heavily through the coming weeks of league and midweek fixtures.
For now, Diaz’s starting spot is not under direct siege. The concern is not his status. It is his rhythm.
“Some would be glad if they had a dip like his,” Eberl argued, before stressing the logic behind the international break off. “In South America, the international matches are not absolutely necessary now and it is simply good for the player. He has just had a lot of games. So in that respect it is nice.” Diaz will “first have a bit of a holiday and then get going again. He will have his programme. There is no need to worry that he will not come back fit.”
A familiar remedy
This is not uncharted territory for Bayern or for Diaz.
Back in December 2025, he was suspended in the Champions League after a red card and had just collected his fifth yellow in the Bundesliga. With no games to play, Vincent Kompany made a deliberate call.
The coach sent him away for a few days, explaining that it was simply sensible to let him recharge and return “mentally and physically at one hundred per cent.”
The effect then was clear. Diaz came back sharper, hungrier, and delivered a strong second half of the season.
Now the break arrives much earlier, with the noise around him louder and the internal competition fiercer. The numbers say he should already have three or four goals. The table shows zero since Stuttgart.
Bayern’s dressing room is celebrating milestones. Diaz is chasing the next simple one: the feeling of the net bulging again.
The last time a short holiday reset his season. In three weeks’ time, at Augsburg, we find out if the same cure still works.
