Charles Jackson
You’ve no doubt heard the story of Bayer Leverkusen, the conquering kings of German football who may be just 180 minutes away from immortality. Beat Atalanta in the Europa League final and second-tier Kaiserslautern in the DFB Pokal and you will have played Europe’s first unbeaten top-flight season in the era of UEFA competitions. Not bad for a club previously defined by the glorious failures of 2000-02.
You can get an idea of where Leverkusen are headed. You may not be as familiar with how they got there. To truly understand Xabi Alonso’s Invincibles it is necessary to understand the team that the Spaniard inherited in the autumn of 2022, anchored in the Bundesliga’s relegation zone. The issue was not so much the quality of the players, but rather the feeling of neglect they felt. This was particularly pronounced in the Leverkusen defense, where they were late to second balls, continually chasing to recover, any semblance of form quickly disappearing in the vertical run of the German game.
“Initially we had to focus on stabilizing ourselves defensively,” Leverkusen’s crown jewel Florian Wirtz said weeks after Alonso’s appointment. “We had to improve that part of the game. That’s why the whole team was focused on defensive work. Firstly, defending our goal, not giving up goals. That was really the base that Xabi wanted to build.”
Europa League Final: Atalanta vs Bayer Leverkusen
Date: Wednesday, May 22 | Time: 3:00 p.m. ET
Location: Aviva Stadium – Dublin, Ireland
TELEVISION: CBS Sports Network | Flow: Paramount+
Almost immediately, Alonso established a back three that would become the basis of this all-conquering team, Jonathan Tah flanked by Edmond Tapsoba on his left and Odilon Kossounou on his right. That defense, supported by Piero Hincapie and Josip Stanisic, and Lukas Hradecky would achieve 16 clean sheets in 34 Bundesliga games this season, conceding just 24 goals in total and allowing just 30.1 expected goals (xG).
An important factor in this defensive excellence is what perhaps should not seem like the radical break with the orthodoxy of German football that it could be. Alonso’s team really keeps the ball. O gegen pressing The age is not over yet and only five Bundesliga teams complete an average of more than 3.5 passes per sequence, the top five teams in the league to be precise. They average more passes per sequence than anyone else, 4.9, and have the second slowest pace in the league in terms of yards advanced. In this sense, it is a team built in the image of its manager, who prioritizes control above all else.
“The positioning, the rhythm, the construction of our game – we like to do it differently,” Alonso said of his team. “We try to be patient, we don’t like to be too crazy or agitated. That’s something that’s not easy to do in the Bundesliga.”
If you want to do that, you need a player like Alonso. Sources say the Leverkusen coach is not particularly didactic about the formation his team should play in, his plan is more fluid than those who have coached at various clubs, but he has a clear preference for a double pivot in midfield. The boss is Granit Xhaka, who finished the season leading the Bundesliga in touches, shots, passes into the final third and carries, among many other statistics. Assisted by Exequiel Palacios or Robert Andrich, the former Arsenal player sets the pace and controls the center of the field, blocking the opponent’s attempts to advance in large numbers. The passing map from the 4-0 win over Union Berlin in October – one of those games rarer than you might think, where what is considered the title-winning XI in fact, they all take the field together from the start – it emphasizes the outsized role that Xhaka (no. 34) and Palacios (no. 25) play, even for central midfielders.
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If Xhaka controls the field, it will be up to Alonso’s wingers to stretch him. Jeremie Frimpong does this by putting the winger behind. With Moussa Diaby having left for Aston Villa in the summer, it is up to the Dutch international to stretch the pitch and bring a fast pace to the team, often functioning as a one-man right flank, with Jonas Hoffman positioned further up the pitch. His eight goals “from touch” may seem remarkable until you discover that he made more touches in the box than any other player in the Bundesliga. Harry Kane: 197. Lois Openda: 225. A guy whose position has the word back, in over 400 minutes less: 230.
In fact, both Kane and Openda also had more touches in their large defensive area than Frimpong’s 19. In short… this is not a normal heatmap, Jeremie.
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Alejandro Grimaldo is just a little more orthodox. He tends to stay more on the left flank than burst into the box and when Leverkusen lose the ball he is more likely to do his usual things on the wing, dropping back to create a four-man defence. His ball-recovery qualities have perhaps gone unnoticed, which is no wonder given the string of brilliant goals he has scored, whether from set pieces or from more central areas.
His return of 19 assists and in particular 12 goals (from 7.6 xG) speaks to what is probably an inevitable truth for a team that is 51 games unbeaten: many of their players have hit streaks in front of goal at a time in which their opponents did not make the most of their chances. Xhaka’s implausible effort against Mainz, Florian Wirtz smashing the ball home against Werder Bremen and Grimaldo deflecting the ball from the left into the right corner to put away Union Berlin: how many stunning long-range shots have you seen on social media this season? Bayer’s shooting hand has been sizzling over the last 10 months.
Interestingly, only Victor Boniface hasn’t destroyed his xG, at least in the Bundesliga. That’s not a big problem when he’s averaging 0.7 penalty-free xG per 90 minutes. The Nigerian was limited to just 1,553 minutes, the vast majority of which came from an adductor problem before the winter break. His physicality means he can excel with his back to goal, but he is also an extremely effective ball carrier, averaging six shots per 90 and 1.3 chances created. Patrik Schick, Amine Adli and Borja Iglesias, on loan in January, have offered some of what Boniface does, but having him at full speed will offer Atalanta a much tougher test.
So there is the guy, the local superstar (well, since they took him out of the Cologne academy at 16) who, like Alonso, says he is more committed to making history with Leverkusen than following in the footsteps of Diaby, Kai Havertz or Michael Ballack. from the Bay Arena. Hoffman is the double 10, Wirtz is the jewel 10. An outlet for ball progression, a carrier and creator in the final third, a decisive figure in the penalty area: the 21-year-old has all the qualities of an archetypal creator.
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What makes him the guiding star of this Leverkusen team is his work off the ball. His teammates don’t need to accommodate Wirtz without the ball. In fact, he leads the charge, competing in more duels than any other member of the Work alone, making more ball recoveries in the final third than any other player in the Bundesliga. If that kind of player is creating six and a half shots for himself and his teammates every 90 minutes, then you’re working with something really special.
Nitro has dropped in V12, Wirtz’s rise to no longer being one of the best young players in the world but simply one of its key talents explains why Leverkusen have the talent to remain unbeaten. There is one more ingredient in this superteam: the relentless belief, perhaps now the knowledge, that they will not lose. Even when they don’t actually need a goal, they keep chasing more. A goal down for Roma that night but with a 3-2 lead on aggregate in the Europa League semi-final as they pushed for equality, Stanisic advanced, showing impressive coolness to receive the ball at full tilt, setting up his defender on the ground and score home a draw to make him 49 undefeated.
“You can’t exclude us, not for a second,” Frimpong said after that great escape. “No one gives up. Everyone knows that if we fall we will score a goal.”
To see Roma, West Ham, Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt give in to death is to have the feeling that it is not just Leverkusen that is waiting for the last dagger.
Leverkusen’s manifest destiny, it seems, is a triple unbeaten record, the kind of season that no one in Europe could imagine Manchester City, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid delivering, let alone a team that was in the relegation zone of the Bundesliga 19 months ago. The team that once only knew how to lose now seems to view the idea that anyone could beat them as simply unimaginable.
