Bayer is close to gold in the German championship

After the 25th round of the German championship, it seems that there is complete clarity about which event will become the main sensation of the European football season. The victory over Wolfsburg – 2:0 – allowed Bayer to maintain a ten-point lead over Bayern, which until recently seemed invulnerable, despite the fact that there were only nine rounds left before the finish of the championship. Given the amazingly high level of play of Leverkusen, who have become a real phenomenon thanks to the work of coach Xabi Alonso, he looks irresistible.

A convincing home win for the championship leader against a team in the bottom half of the table is, in general, an ordinary story. But Bayer’s victory over Wolfsburg became an occasion for the official Bundesliga website to publish a whole study devoted to the peculiarities of its game, and for a bunch of foreign media resources to recall once again all the clichés associated with this club. First of all, naturally, the short nicknames that once stuck to him, but extremely succinctly explain the salt of his track record – “Neverkusen”, “Vicekusen”. Indeed, this is an interesting list. Since the mid-1990s, there have been five silver medals in the German championship, but not a single gold medal. Plus – reaching the Champions League final in 2002 with a defeat from Real Madrid. In other words, a whole stack of campaigns for a big title – and all unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, the reason to talk about these misfires again was not bad, because the big title finally seems to be here to stay. The success in the match with Wolfsburg maintained Bayer, which is at the top of the German standings, a ten-point lead over its closest pursuer, Bayern. And considering that there are only nine rounds before the end of the championship, it is difficult to imagine how it could be squandered by a team that has not lost a single one of the 36 official matches this season. However, its seemingly inevitable triumph will be perceived as an extraordinary event not only because of Bayer’s specific background.

When his bosses appointed Xabi Alonso as head coach in October 2022, the thought of an imminent breakthrough hardly occurred to any neutral observer. After eight rounds, Bayer was in second place from the bottom in the standings. And the invitation to a key post of a 40-year-old specialist, who had a great football career, but his coaching experience was limited to working with the Real Sociedad reserve team in his native Spain, looked something like a gesture of desperation – well, at the peak of a crisis you always want to take a chance on hope for a miracle.

It was almost a miracle, given the bad start of the championship, that, following its results, Bayer, which had long ago lost even the habit of taking silver, climbed to sixth position and entered the European competition. But what happened to him next was already drawn to real magic, without any reservations. And what is most important is that it is completely different in nature than, say, the Spanish rise of the modest Girona, which is now fighting for awards.

The rise of Bayer cannot be explained, as in the case of her, by happy insights, coincidences and discoveries, or momentary factors. It is based on a stable demonstration of exceptional class, experienced not only by the middle peasants and outsiders, but by all leading German clubs, including Bayern, which won 11 previous championships. A month ago, Bayer beat it – 3:0 – in a match in which the Munich team had almost no chances to score. And this despite the fact that if Bayern bought the outstanding scorer Harry Kane in the summer of 2023, then none of Bayer’s acquisitions, let’s say, were talked about with aspiration. Granit Xhaka, Jonas Hofmann, Victor Boniface, Alejandro Grimaldo are good reinforcements to try and fight for medals, but not good enough to compete with the Munich monster. But the Munich monster, even if it is almost in step with its own championship schedule of last season, is currently only two points behind it, and does not look like a competitor.

The whole point, of course, is not in the names, no matter how great Bayer’s newcomers play (and the core of the midfield, Xhaka, for example, is experiencing a second youth), and those who were already in the team when Xabi Alonso joined it, – goalkeeper Lukasz Hradecki, central defender Jonathan Ta. The point is the amazing system built by the Spanish coach.

She is perfectly balanced. Bayer, for example, is only slightly inferior to Bayern, which has always been a German statistical beacon, in terms of the number of shots on goal (440 versus 490), and in xG coefficient, that is, in so-called expected goals (55.4 versus 62, 2), surpassing it in the efficiency of realizing chances. But another figure is even more revealing. In football, as in hockey, it is now customary to record both goals scored and assists. In the German championship, in which 18 clubs compete, after 25 rounds there are a damn dozen players with seven or more such passes. Three of them – Victor Boniface, Florian Wirtz and Alejandro Grimaldo – play for Bayer. Moreover, Grimaldo and Wirtz have ten assists each. And next to the top three are also Jonas Hofmann and Jeremie Frimpong, who each have six assists. If we choose illustrations on the topic that football is still, like a century and half a century ago, a game in which, whatever one may say, everything is built on a pass, then Bayer, rushing to its first high-profile title, is simply impeccable.

Alexey Dospehov