Bayer Leverkusen complete undefeated domestic season as Granit Xhaka downs Kaiserslautern in DFB-Pokal final

BERLIN — If it wasn’t quite the story they expected to make on Wednesday morning, it wasn’t bad for Bayer Leverkusen either. Fifty-two and one, the first German double winners to go an entire national campaign without defeat. The fact that there was no Europa League title should hardly dull the triumph of a club that has so often witnessed the glory of others.

The victory was closer than it might have been at the time, but playing with 10 men for more than half of the DFB Pokal gave Germany the chance to see a different Leverkusen team. Xabi Alonso’s men have gone 51 games without losing, mainly due to the quality of their players, tactics and training. But even teams with all these qualities don’t do what Leverkusen almost did. You need a little courage to match your Granit Xhaka noble cut.

Not that many expected that Kaiserslautern, champions of Germany relatively recently, but more recently fighting to avoid relegation from the 2. Bundesliga, would represent a major challenge to Leverkusen’s bid for national unbeaten status. The pre-game typhus – a red devil shrouded in smoke, a volcano rippling behind him – warned of fire and brimstone. The representatives of the Westkurve he certainly achieved that, but when a shot on goal by Lukas Hradecky was the reason for eight flares to be lit, one felt that the Kaiserslautern fans might have known from the start that there would not be much to celebrate against the champions.

That certainly appeared to be the case when, after 17 minutes of increasingly assertive possession, Xhaka eliminated the intermediary, slotting the ball home from 30 yards. He only scores goals, they say in Leverkusen. It says everything about his and his teammates’ remarkable season that this might not even top Xhaka’s goalscoring podium for the season.

Everyone knew what would come next, the slow movement of pass after pass, along the lines of Alonso’s playing days. He may recoil at the tiki-taka label applied to his Leverkusen team, but he also seems to understand the value of slowing down, quelling confusion at the opposite end by passing the ball between Xhaka, Jonathan Tah and any other player in black and red who likes one touch.

Everything was going so well until Odilon Kossounou stretched too far for a ball out of reach. Instead, his studs caught Boris Tomiak’s ankle and, for the first time in 364 days, Leverkusen played with a man down. What they asked of so many opponents that they were given the task: stand their ground, survive possession, leave when they can. The inventive 3-4-2-1 that stretched the German fields beyond their natural limits suddenly became two benches of four, what we have, we keep.

July 4th, coming at the start of the away game, delaying the restart of play by around three minutes, gave substitutes Josip Stanisic and Amine Adli time to prepare for the occasion. Kaiserslautern had more possession of the ball than in the first half, where Xhaka threatened to overcome the entire opponent, but that didn’t please them very much.

This was a team certainly prepared by veteran coach Friedhelm Funkel to hit Leverkusen hard on the counterattack and that was where they represented the biggest threat. Twice in three minutes, around the hour mark, Ragnar Ache led a man on the stomach, shooting wide when holding on to possession could have opened up more opportunities. Given the confusion these half-chances created, you wondered whether an equalizer would leave this field in unsuitable condition to host the Euros.

An answer never came. Whatever Alonso said to Florian Wirtz when he stopped a quick move to hug his star, it worked. He made Leverkusen sing again, winning the ball high up and launching counterattacks that Jeremie Frimpong could have done more of. No matter, Kaiserslautern considered that 10 Leverkusen men were no easier opponent than the top flight considered 11.