Leroy Sané all smiles in big Bayern Munich win

Bayern Munich 5-0 Dynamo Kyiv
(Lewandowski pen. 12', 27', Gnabry 68', Sané 74', Choupo-Moting 87')
Allianz Arena

In the sixth minute, Leroy Sané burst past white shirts into midfield. Unlike his usual forays forward, this one was without the ball and he was running towards his own goal. Eventually, the 25-year-old caught up with the ball and quickly reclaimed it for his team. Before the game quickly moved on, the crowd responded with applause.

In the context of Bayern's 5-0 win, it was barely a footnote but in Sané's career it was the perfect example of a player transformed.

"He's so hard working," Julian Nagelsmann told DAZN afterwards. "And that's also a symbol that he wants to keep a clean sheet and from an attacking player that's an important message to send."

Nagelsmann has been in charge of 10 games at Bayern. Sané has started eight of them, scoring four and assisting seven. In almost all of them Sané has played down the left wing, with a small tendency to move into the center.

"He [Nagelsmann] is trying some new stuff with me, as you can see I've been in the middle a bit more," Sané told DAZN afterwards. Nagelsmann later added that he wants Sané to play a bit more centrally.

Having spent most of last season down the right, the change appears to have transformed Sané. Perhaps playing under Nagelsmann, 22 years younger than former Bayern boss Hansi Flick, has helped ease Sané. In Flick's first three games for Germany though, Sané scored two goals and an assisted another all from the left wing. Perhaps it really is just that he's so much better when he doesn't feel he has to cut in from the right, as his predecessor at Bayern famously often did.

"I've always worked hard. I knew there would be pressure here but I've focused and worked on me," Sané said afterwards.

That's the funny thing about confidence. It can change the direction of a performance, sometimes even a career. Sané had a couple of errant passes in the first half and one tiny extra touch that denied him a goal in the second. Last season, that might have put him off his stride but not even an effort off the post stopped Sané.

Time and again Sané danced through defenders with impressive ease. Time and again he tracked back as he did in the sixth minute, to win the ball for his team. The assist for Gnabry's goal felt fitting. The goal, a cross that went so wrong it looked right, was the perfect way to sign off.

"I wanted to cross it and had a bit of luck that my technique wasn't great at that time," Sané said with a smile afterwards. 

On a night when Bayern strolled to the victory expected of them, Sané was so much fun to watch. More importantly, his smile was so wide when he came off with 12 minutes to go there was no doubt how much he had enjoyed himself. That alone should get Bayern fans excited about their number 10 again.