Luis Díaz Faces Pressure at Bayern Amid Missed Chances

Luis Díaz is discovering the hard way that at Bayern, every heavy touch, every missed chance, is magnified.

According to Sport1, the Colombian’s start to the season has caused “bewilderment” inside the club. Not because he’s invisible. Quite the opposite. He keeps getting into prime scoring positions. And then wasting them.

A winger under the spotlight

The goalless draw against FC Schalke 04 was the first flashpoint. Bayern’s hierarchy were said to be unimpressed with the team’s lack of cutting edge, and Díaz’s profligacy formed part of that picture. He was far from the only culprit against Loris Karius, but his missed opportunities fit an emerging pattern that is becoming impossible to ignore.

That pattern continued in the narrow 2-1 win over SV Elversberg on Sunday. With the score at 1-1 in the 67th minute, Bayern carved out exactly the kind of move they signed Díaz to finish.

Michael Olise slipped a superb ball into the box, picking out Díaz in space. The setup was perfect; the execution was anything but. Díaz’s first touch was slightly loose, the ball got away from him, and instead of resetting with a simple finish, he tried to flick it in with his heel. Style over certainty. The chance vanished.

TV cameras caught the reaction in brutal detail. Josip Stanisic, arriving behind the play, had already thrown his arms up in celebration, convinced the net was about to bulge. When the ball stayed out, his expression flipped from joy to fury in a heartbeat before he lashed out in frustration. It was the look of a defender who knows such chances rarely come gift-wrapped twice.

To Díaz’s right, Harry Kane had also been waiting. A square pass would likely have left him with a tap-in into an empty net. The England captain did not hide his displeasure and made his feelings clear to his team-mate in the aftermath of the miss. Five minutes later, Kane showed the ruthlessness currently deserting Díaz, spinning and drilling in the decisive 2-1 winner himself.

Numbers that tell a harsh story

Strip away the emotion and the statistics are still damning. According to data from FotMob, the Elversberg miss was Díaz’s sixth big chance spurned in just three Bundesliga appearances this season.

The wastefulness has not been confined to the league. In the Champions League against Bodø/Glimt and in the DFB-Pokal tie with VfL Osnabrück, he again found himself in promising positions, only to leave the pitch without his name on the scoresheet. He has just one goal to his name this campaign, coming in the 5-1 opening win over VfB Stuttgart – and even that night, he passed up two more gilt‑edged opportunities before finally converting.

For a player of his pedigree, that return jars. Bayern did not sign a winger to decorate games; they signed a finisher, a difference‑maker.

Echoes of his first Bayern months

None of this is entirely new. In his debut season after arriving from Liverpool, Díaz briefly carried the unwanted label of a serial chance-misser. The runs were there, the movement sharp, the work rate high – but the final touch often deserted him.

Then something clicked. He “flicked the switch”, as it was often described, and turned into one of Europe’s most dangerous attackers, finishing that campaign with 26 goals and 23 assists. Once the dam broke, the flood followed.

That transformation is the reference point inside Säbener Straße now. There is frustration, yes, but also a belief that this is a storm he has already navigated once.

Eberl backs Díaz to break the drought

Board member for sport Max Eberl cut through the noise after the Elversberg win. He refused to pile on publicly, instead framing Díaz’s struggles as part of a wider issue with Bayern’s finishing on the day.

“Should I, as a former defender who never scored a goal, tell Lucho Díaz how he should score a goal better?” Eberl said, alluding to his own record of no goals in 104 top-flight and 111 second-division matches for Bochum, Fürth and Gladbach. “Lucho doesn’t have the momentum at the moment. We missed several chances today. At some point his drought will end again too.”

The message was clear: the club sees a slump, not a crisis.

Still, Bayern is a place where patience has limits. Kane is already carrying the scoring burden. The margins in the Bundesliga and Champions League will tighten as the season wears on. At some point, those backheels and heavy touches will have to give way to the cold, simple finish that once made Luis Díaz one of the most feared wide forwards in Europe.

The chances are still coming. The question now is how long Bayern will wait for him to start burying them.