It was always going to end at some point. They just didn’t want it to be here. Leverkusen’s phenomenal unbeaten run was stopped at 14 games, at the start of the week that will contain their Europa League semi-final first-leg date with destiny against Roma.
“It just wasn’t a good performance,” said the sporting director, Simon Rolfes, seeking to dedramatise the disappointment. “It was down to us that we lost this game. No one else.” The midfielder Robert Andrich so often the barometer of mood in good times and bad, who always seems to find the right words, was a touch more frank. “It doesn’t get much more difficult to take than when a run like this ends in the derby against Köln,” he lamented. “And in the BayArena.”
