Thomas Tuchel’s decision to take Harry Kane off in Bayern Munich’s defeat to Real Madrid has been slammed by Owen Hargreaves and labelled ‘arrogant’ by Paul Scholes.
With the Champions League semi-final level at 2-2 after the first leg, Bayern were on course to cause an upset in Madrid when Alphonso Davies scored the opener on Wednesday night in the 68th minute.
The Germans were still in front on 85 minutes when Tuchel substituted the England captain, bringing on Eric Choupo-Moting in his place.
Everything went horribly wrong for Bayern from there, with Real Madrid substitute Joselu scoring twice in the dying minutes to send his team to the Champions League final where they will take on Borussia Dortmund.
Former Bayern midfielder Hargreaves was baffled by the decision to remove Kane when Bayern could easily have needed to score in the coming minutes, which is exactly what happened.
‘I tell you what was unexpected, Harry Kane going off the pitch,’ Hargreaves said on TNT Sports. ‘That’s one of the biggest subs I’ve ever seen in a game of football of that magnitude.
‘To take off a guy who has scored 44 goals, who is the most durable player pretty much anywhere. And bring on another striker in Choupo-Moting. Maybe he wanted height for corners, I don’t know… you cannot take him off!
‘There’s five minutes left, maybe 10 minutes injury time, 15 minutes left. I said straight away, Real Madrid are going to score. And then what?
‘That’s one of the biggest calls I’ve seen, I don’t know why they made that call. I love Tuchel but… the subs, everyone is going to be talking bout that. You cannot take Harry Kane off.’
Manchester United legend Paul Scholes suggested it was a touch of arrogance from Tuchel who thought the game was done.
‘In some ways it’s almost an arrogant sub,’ he said. ‘Thinking I can afford to take your biggest goal-scorer, biggest threat off the pitch and still go on and beat Real Madrid.
‘Even if they’d got one goal, there’s still another half hour of the game [extra-time]. There’s a long way to go without your best players on the pitch.
‘They were always going to try and score goals on the counter-attack and I thought Harry Kane was perfect for that, I mean more playing other people in.’
MORE : Real Madrid stage late comeback to battle past Bayern Munich and reach Champions League final
For more stories like this, check our sport page.
Follow Metro Sport for the latest news on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Share this with