Luis Díaz scores in Bayern Munich's 5-1 rout of Stuttgart, but it was an uneven night

The start of the Bundesliga season brought a lopsided rout and a bittersweet night for Luis Díaz. Bayern Munich beat Stuttgart 5-1 in its league opener, and the Colombian closed out the scoring with a late goal, after missing two chances that looked easier than the one he ended up converting.

Vincent Kompany again put his trust in Díaz on the left inside the now-familiar 4-3-3, with Harry Kane up top and Michael Olise on the right. The Belgian coach's thinking seems clear: that front three already worked last season, and there's no reason to change it just as the campaign is getting underway.

The problem was that, unlike what he showed in preseason, Díaz couldn't find his footing in the final third. His clearest chance came just past the quarter-hour mark: with 25 minutes on the clock, Kane produced a brilliant assist from midfield that put the Colombian through one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Díaz drove forward at pace and shot across goal, but the keeper got a hand to it, stretching his right arm to the limit to keep it out. A play that had "goal" written all over it ended up amounting to nothing.

After that sequence, the Colombian seemed to fade from the match. It wasn't that he played poorly, but he was hard to spot combining with teammates or creating real danger in the opposing box, something he had shown often the previous season.

With the result already all but decided, another clear-cut chance arrived in the 85th minute. He beat the goalkeeper, who came out poorly positioned and mistimed his run, but Díaz's finish, a lofted shot from outside the box, sailed well wide of the goal. Two goal-scoring chances, two misses, and it looked like it might be a scoreless night for him.

The reward came in stoppage time

But Díaz kept pushing until the final whistle, and soccer rewarded him for it. Deep into stoppage time, after an assist from Saibari, the Colombian found himself alone inside the box and this time finished across goal to make it a final 5-1. It was his first official goal of this Bundesliga season, though it came at the end of an inconsistent performance, far from the level he showed in his first year in Germany.

With this result, Bayern opens the season with a resounding rout, and Díaz adds minutes and confidence heading into what's next. The goal, though late, let him end on a positive note a night that was closer to frustration than celebration.