It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. They had shown they could fall with the finishing line in sight – and how – to Zinedine Zidane’s famous, thunderous left-footer at Hampden Park, or to a rampant Bayern Munich in the mid-Covid DFB Pokal final in Berlin. For a more modern twist you could even throw in last year’s Europa League semi-final under Xabi Alonso’s command, in which José Mourinho and Roma miraculously survived a barrage in the BayArena (23 Leverkusen shots to Roma’s one). Not this season, though.
The greatest testament to Bayer Leverkusen’s extraordinary season is that losing Wednesday’s Europa League final in Dublin (and comprehensively at that) to Atalanta felt like the shock, rather than Die Werkself getting there in the first place to fluff their lines. Fifty-one games unbeaten up until that point doesn’t quite do it justice. Alonso’s side have been a juggernaut, trampling all in their way and, on the occasions they have found themselves behind, eventually reeling in their opponents with increasing inevitability. The later-than-late equalisers and winners against Stuttgart, Borussia Dortmund, Qarabag, Roma – the list goes on on – had the feel of one of the giants of Europe making gravity count, rather than an upstart, first-time champion, as they were in this season’s Bundesliga.
